The Sun beamed off the regolith floor, and LunAucity XCursion number fifty-seven (the better half of the crew) took in a rather glorious panoramic view of the northeast side of Mare Tranquillitatis as they ate their meals.
Eva found a table towards the back of the room, and chairs were positioned around it. On the closest wall, a TV stretched across the pixilated glass surface and was playing the headline news channel at low volume in one corner of the screen.
Crass muted it with a voice command and sat down at a chair facing out over the dry and barren landscape. He sipped on a soda packet with twenty-three flavors nestled within a bright and shiny package. Tiny beads of sweat ran down the package, and collected around the base of the orange straw poking through the middle.
Out on the quickly fading horizon of the smaller planet known as the Moon, rovers blazed their weaving trails over the regolith, sending out clouds of dust behind them. There was no wind here and they died out quickly.
Crass sipped his soda, hearing commotion from behind him. Turning, he saw Mickey walking up with a tray full of food. Some items were stacked on top of each other in disorderly piles of cellophane.
“I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I saw the menu up there. Did you guys see it?” Mickey asked of anyone paying attention.
Eva was busy eating, trying to watch the silent news primetime edition. Skye was sitting in the corner by herself, having a video conversation with someone across two hundred and forty thousand miles of Space.
Crass stared out the glass as Mickey rolled up with his red lunch tray and took the seat beside him at the small round table.
He smiled and said, “Three hundred and sixty-five food items. I could stay here for awhile, Crass. It may take getting used to, but I think I could do it.” He began unfolding the cellophane wrappers one by one.
Crass kept his eyes on the blanket of regolith glistening in the sunlight encompassed by a pale black sky. There were no oceans here and not many people he could call up and have a chat with. Or get in his truck and go visit whenever he liked. To say that it’d be strange would be a complete understatement.
“What the hell would we do up here Mickey?” Crass asked with a crossed look. “For work or entertainment? I hate being dragged into a state of ennui.”
Mickey was licking his fingers of something brown and sticky. “Man, I don’t know. We may know more about this place after we visit the gift shop and see around the premises a little more.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Crass said. “This is a really big goddamn place.”
He looked over the contents of Mickey’s tray. There were crumbles of soft biscuit in some thick sauce like honey BBQ, a half eaten bear claw, three taquitos with shredded cheese curled across the top, a few packets of syrup, and at least half a dozen pickles spread across the tray like a football team in the huddle position. It was one of the most unique meal combinations he’d ever seen. He even thought of snapping a photo and uploading to Facesnap, but forgot sooner than he thought it.
“Why are you staring at my food?” Mickey asked with a sly grin. “You want a bite of something?” He casually picked up a wrapper of something circular and lobbed it to Crass, who was unprepared for the kind gesture and missed the shot. His hand caught the tail end of the biscuit, throwing the object’s trajectory off by a few degrees.
Mickey and Crass watched in disbelief as the cellophane package tumbled through the air and on and on and on, still in flight, until it finally struck the LunaDome plaque hung on the far wall, about as far away as a football field was long.
“Can you imagine playing tennis or even baseball here?” Crass asked with a good deal of excitement in his voice. He was turning the possibility over in his mind.
“I don’t think the physics would agree with those too much. Most sports are played with a ball of some kind. That goes out the windows with a sixth of the gravity,” Mickey said, scratching his face where the stubble was starting to poke through.
“You’re right, Mick. I think swimming would be ok, huh?”
Mickey was munching on a biscuit with golden syrup running down the back in thick and shiny rivulets. He wiped his mouth and said, “Seems like it. You want this last honey butter biscuit?”
Crass gazed at it, making up his mind quickly. “Yeah, but don’t throw the damn thing this time. Please.”
Mickey laughed and handed him the warm cellophane package. Crass unwrapped it and took a series of short bites; the soft crumbles fell down in his lap and hit the floor around his feet.
“This is good. What is it?” he asked, taking a bite of the biscuit.
“Honey butter biscuit. I believe the menu said it was a creation from the southern United States,” Mickey replied, getting up to recycle his lunch tray at the basket by the outer doors of the cafeteria. He walked over and picked up the misfired package on the floor, stuffing it into his pants pocket for later.
“I’ll catch up with you at the gift shop later,” he said from across the café’s polished floor. “I’m going to take a shower and maybe catch a catnap.”
“Alright dude. See ya later,” Crass yelled across the floor.
Mickey waved his hand and exited through the doors, skipping over the black line back towards his room. He finished up his meal and walked over to where Eva was sitting down on the teal green couch. She had changed the TV channel over to a rerun of an old show—ER.
A tray with two crumbles of cellophane sat on the aluminum table in front of her. She was twirling the long strands of her hair as Crass sat down next to her, moving the bulky pillows out of the way, and placing them carefully on the floor. Here, you couldn’t just go tossing loose shit around. It could fly halfway around the building before it finally met a solid wall.
“You like this show?” he asked, nudging her in the side playfully.
“Quit it you ass!” Eva said, glancing at him with cloudy eyes. “I watched it growing up. I sometimes think it was an early inspiration for my choice in careers.” She locked eyes with him.
“It’s a good show,” he said with an honest smile. “Maybe not quite as good as House M.D. was, but it’s certainly better than Grey’s Anatomy.” Crass chuckled under his breath.
“God yes! That show was almost unbearable to watch,” she said, rolling her eyes and looking off for a moment. Crass looked around the café floor and didn’t see Skye hanging around anymore.
“What happened to Skye?” he asked, turning to look her in the eyes again. The green there was the color of emeralds, and the stars danced in them brightly.
“She went to take a shower and lie down for a little while. She said the long trip wore her out.”
Crass nodded his head, understanding this fact and sympathizing with her. A nap sounded like pure bliss at the moment.
“I’m thinking about joining her.” Eva said, standing up and taking the red tray with her. The LunaDome emblem was permanently stamped in the middle, and here a river of ketchup blocked out most of the latter part of the word, showcasing only the Luna side untainted by tomato paste.
“That would be hot,” Crass said, raising his eyes. “Lesbian encounters on the Moon. I could turn that into a fine story.” Crass grinned widely. If only he had Mickey’s mouth, this would have been a true golden moment.
“Not literally, assjerk. Figuratively, like in the same sense or whatever.” Eva tossed the cellophane in the recycle basket and placed the red tray on top.
“I get it, you know. But my mind still likes to wander back and entertain the thought, if only for shits and giggles.”
Eva turned and looked at him. “Is that what it’s like to have a penis?”
Crass thought the question over. “Well, I’d venture to say it’s close. It speaks, and loudly sometimes.”
He stood up, keeping his body close to hers. She looked at him for what felt like an hour or more.
“What’s it saying now?” she asked, the strands of her hair falling around her shoulders in coiled brune
tte lumps. Her eyes pierced his, gently.
“He’s been saying he’d like an experience on the Moon, and rightly insists it has to be something new if you’re on a new planet.” Crass stared back at her— emerald enticement. The skin on her neck looked soft and delicate, inviting him over to it, but he resisted easily. Sexual tension was very, very useful.
“I thought the same earlier when we were headed over on the rocket,” Eva said softly, and turned to walk out the doors.
“So I’m not the only one…well, Thank God!” Crass exclaimed, following behind her.
“We’ll see what happens,” she said. “There are a lot of things I want to do up here and we’ve only just now arrived and ate. I am curious, though.”
The doors slid open and they walked into the main corridor.
“Walk me to my room?” Eva asked, blinking her big green eyes and holding out her right arm.
Crass obliged, grabbed her arm, and escorted the lady back to her room. He kissed the side of her lips when he got there, and then walked to his room on A-block to lie down for a little while.
The dreams here were exciting, the looniest yet.
XI: Meet Facesnap
They’d taken one of the big white rovers, heading towards a mountainous crater with a rocky and steep embankment like a volcano. The Sun beat down from the pale black sky above as the lunar craft parked close to the paramount and the astronauts exited to do their research.
Eva had driven them both here, and she and Crass walked towards the rocky edge precipice overlooking a shadowed crater with walls twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.
“It’s Shackleton Crater.” She edged closer to the grey cliff and gazed over the side with wandering eyes. “We’re pretty close to the South Pole of the Moon.”
Crass didn’t have any clue she was savvy with the Moon’s geography. She looked like any normal nurse practitioner might. It was better (judging from his own from past experiences) to not judge a book by its cover, which he so serendipitously did at the moment.
A light breeze picked up and swept across the loose mat of grey dust, setting a multitude of sand twisters in motion. Little shards of silica flew through the air with unknown destinations. The wind pushed Eva’s hair across her thin shoulders and around the soft nape of her neck.
Either he hadn’t noticed prior or this was something developing, but either way, Eva stood on the rim of Shackleton Crater dressed in a bikini and the green booties she’d worn at Innsmouth. One green foot was propped up on a nearby boulder as the sunlight gleamed off her abdomen. Her tanned legs showed no trace of stubble whatsoever. Crass wanted to look all day at those beauties.
“I like the bikini. It does your body good,” he said, thinking over the last statement again and again and again. It reminded him of something he just couldn’t seem to place at the moment.
Eva turned to face him, pushing one foot in front of the other on the jagged rocks. The flimsy surgical boots didn’t give much protection, at least he thought so. But they were holding up rather well, considering the circumstances.
“We don’t always get to pick our outfits,” she said, brushing her hair back over her shoulder and simply staring at him. “You should know that.”
The Sun rested on the top of her shoulders and he thought he spotted a few freckles staring to rise to the delicate surface, popping up like mile markers on the Interstate.
“Have you even seen yourself?” she asked, cocking her eyes slightly for effect.
“No…don’t guess I have.”
Crass tilted his head down and scanned over the clothes he was dressed in for this evening’s most surreal adventure.
His blue t-shirt had an Indian man sitting in the Zen position and words running in spiraling type, of which he had trouble reading from his current angle, but he knew the shirt alright. It was one he’d collected at a concert many years ago when a teenager. He’d given twenty-five greenbacks for the damn thing and wore it until holes ate the cotton in slow and steady doses.
His hairy legs were showcased in khaki shorts, and flip-flops clung to his bare feet. He looked about ready to go to Starbucks for coffee, or if he had the time (likely chance), he could head over to the library and search for that Dostoyevsky novel he’d been wanting to read for forever now it seemed. Just how good could the damn thing be? he thought to himself.
“We’re really light without those spacesuits on,” Crass said.
He picked up a loose chunk of rock and nonchalantly lobbed it across the mouth of the crater. It felt like a breadcrumb in the palm of his hand. It soared over the wide expanse, flying well past the further wall, and on and on until he couldn’t see it anymore. It disappeared over the softly bulging and quickly receding horizon in front of him.
How long before it came back around and slapped him in the back of the head? Could that even happen?
Honestly, he didn’t know if it could or not. He was no physicist or scientist with any kind of degree hanging on the interior walls of his office. He didn’t even have an office.
He was Crass and as far as he knew, he was on the Moon, although things were different from the times before.
Eva spoke up, saying: “Yep. You and I together would be a whopping forty pounds or so. With the right pair of wings attached to our arms, it’s possible we could fly all the way across the canyon here if we dared to try.”
“Think about it,” she said. “You could fly wherever you needed to go.” She walked over to the humming rover and climbed in the side door. Two spacesuits sat hoisted on the back of the wide cabin.
One of the greatest revelations of the twenty-first century had just been revealed to him, by way of a pretty girl in an appreciative bikini on the South Pole of the flipping Moon.
Wings huh? Like Icarus?
Crass laughed on the inside. He knew they were more advanced than wax wings these days. He thought Teflon would work better, being more durable and less prone to take any defects from the pin-size meteorites that occasionally rained down on the lunar surface. But, he wondered, just how high could you ascend before…Gee, he didn’t know—you floated out into Space, your lungs exploded, or the blood in your veins turned to radioactive mush? How high could you possibly go before danger erupted and killed all the plans?
He walked over to the rover, thinking about those questions for a while, until finally he stored them in the mental rotisserie for later use. For those moments when he was scrubbing his body off in the shower, or setting up the coffeemaker for the morning brew. That was always a good time.
The Sun grew high in the dark heavens above him. Crass tread across rocks and small boulders with sharp edges like teeth. Loose clusters of regolith skittered over his toes like talcum powder. The air smelled like a Fourth of July celebration at midnight. He grabbed the shiny latch and pulled, freeing the door as it swung out wide on a large spring and slapped the backside of the white quarter panel.
Eva didn’t look up. She was busy finding a station to listen to on the Satellite Radio tuner installed in the dash. Squandering sounds came from the speakers, until finally she dialed in to the Liquid Metal channel.
Crass climbed the stairs and eased over to the pilot’s seat on the rover’s port side, next to the captain’s chair. Wrinkled scrolls of geographical maps lay out on the dash in front of him. He picked them up and scanned over them with mild interest. They didn’t make much sense, being printed in German text and all.
Luna Leitfaden?
Eva straightened up in her seat, and pushed the blue start button on the dash. She slid the transmission lever into all-wheel low and we rolled easily over the brightly lit outer rim of Shackleton, descending towards the soft plains below.
Up ahead, through the bubbled windshield of the rover, he spotted another crater, this one not quite as deep as the one he’d just visited, but wider and with more of an embankment that sloped down gradually towards the lunar floor.
“Another crater?” Crass looked over at her with questioning
eyes.
“That’s Shoemaker crater. It’s named after Ernest Shoemaker, an American geologist who has very special bragging rights.”
She throttled the engines up as we finally descended upon the flat lunar floor, and began sketching our soft trek across the miles and miles of silver-grey regolith.
“What did he do?” Crass asked.
Eva shook her head and smiled. “It’s not what he did. It’s where he’s at.” She pointed her finger at the crater in the distance.
“Some of his ashes were onboard the Lunar Prospector when they crashed it into the permanently shadowed part of the crater, looking for the presence of water. That was July of the year 1999.”
She lifted her eyebrows, and looked back over the sunny horizon line. The blank, grey sands spread out under the weight of the pressurized tires as they rolled onward, forward into time.
“Far out,” Crass muttered under his breath.
He was gazing towards the large crater behind them now—Shackleton was its name. The wind picked up, blowing the desolate sands across our tire tracks, erasing them just as easily as the rover had created them.
Turning around in his seat, Crass noticed a small and bright light beginning to form over the hills and craters in front of them. He could only see maybe two miles of the landscape before it tottered over the horizon, disappearing entirely. Whatever it was, it was growing taller as neared closer to it, bypassing Shoemaker on the starboard side and heading towards Malapert crater up ahead.
He didn’t know any of this information at first, but the in-dash computer screen was teaching him all about the Moon’s geography, with 3-dimensional visual aids. What he found strange among the cratered floor of the Moon was the giant rectangle sitting in between the longitude and latitude lines, hanging directly between Malapert and Shackleton craters, on the smooth floor of the silver valley.
It was a black square, paralyzed in a blue ocean of oddly shaped and scattered circles; easily the oddest thing he’d seen yet. He pointed at it on the screen.
“What’s this? The White House?” he asked sarcastically. He was nearly smiling all over.
LunaDome: A Novel Page 9