LunaDome: A Novel

by Olin, a. Paul

  2

  Someone was knocking on the door rapidly and Crass walked over to let them in, or better yet, check them out.

  It was only Eva, dressed in tight fitting little blue shorts, and an even tighter tank top above that, like she was going to a volleyball match shortly after dinner.

  She whisked by on her heels, and cut a zero degree turn on the sole of her right foot, stopping to look at Crass with unblinking eyes; eyes that were narrow and drawn down, as if they meant to turn out the lights and gently pace over to the bed, where all the immediately pressing needs would suddenly resolve themselves in a hot and steamy climax.

  A man far, far above the world was kicked back in an office chair on the maintenance level of a high rise building and watching the dial marked PULSE steadily tick up. Slow and steady was the crawl. He sipped his coffee leisurely, without haste, and went back to reading a copy of Fahrenheit 451.

  Eva reached out to touch him with her hand. It was soft like silk.

  “I thought we could…you know,” she said, titling her head towards the bed. “And then go eat dinner. We’ve got to see the Observation Deck and the Rec Center before we go home tomorrow.”

  She pulled him towards the CloudBed with her.

  Women, Crass thought. Always planning something. What happened to let’s just stay home tonight?

  Then again, he was on the Moon and really should pinch every adventure he could out of the place. The building itself was vast like a museum, with many layers and things he still hadn’t seen yet. But, it was coming. Perhaps very shortly.

  Eva escorted him over to the bed and they both lied down on the billowing cloud blanket. It was warm and soft like fresh laundry. Crass climbed over on top of her, and arched his back like a cat stretching after a long nap. He brushed his finger down her slender face, all they way to the soft glow of her chin.

  “What do you want Eva?” He stared in the glowing embers of emerald eyes. Invisible, sinuous currents flowed between their eager faces; electrical pathways were shared simultaneously.

  “You,” she replied. “Just… you…Crass.”

  The river was clear and wide, and they both drank freely from it. The taste, as they say, was divine. Oh, so divine.

  3

  “That is the joie de vivre,” Eva said with a sigh.

  This came after they had stirred up a little thunder and precipitation in the Cloud, and were lying next to each other in the bed.

  Crass looked at her quickly. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s French for the joy of living,” she said with an indignantly cute smile. A regular smartass if there ever was one.

  “Can you say it again?” he asked, turning away. “I love the way it rolls off your tongue like fine silk. Please?”

  “Joie de vivre,” she said again. She brought her face closer to his and then slowly retreated like a, like a, just like a damn tease. Her head titled on its axis as she pulled a little more from the French repertoire.

  “Devrions-nous aller manger maintenant? Je meurs de faim.”

  He stared at her with wild amusement, not understanding a single word of what she said, except maybe fore the last item. Faim. There was a gurgling sound taking place in his empty belly. Was she famished? Is that what she was trying to say? Because if it was, it would be a magnifique relief.

  “You’re hungry?” Crass asked, biting on his lower lip. It contorted between his bottom front teeth.

  “Précisément.”

  Eva climbed off the bed and slid her feet into the balance shoes.

  “Good, cuz I’m starving.”

  He got his clothes back on, and slipped into his own shoes, using Eva’s waist for support.

  “Are you ready now?” she asked.

  “I’m always ready. C’mon let’s go.”

  And he grabbed her hand and was off through the door and out to the café for dinner.

  4

  The FloorBots zoomed over the café’s polished floor, doing their usual monotonous routine of shuffling around and cleaning up after the occasional messy human being. Homo sapiens, some anyways, weren’t always so orderly, or even cleanly for that matter.

  From what Crass had observed of the place, the weekend looked to be a retreat mainly for the younger crowd. And from all that he’d gathered in light chit-chat from the employees told him the weekdays were more reserved for the elderly, the only people who actually had the free time to travel Earth and the Planets.

  There were scientists here. Geologists. Seismologists. Psychiatrists (for the employees). Radiologists. Archaeologists. Anesthesiologists. Astronomers. Astronauts. Biologists. Doctors. Investors. And entrepreneurs looking for valuable resources, some which were more plentiful here, than on Earth.

  Helium-3. Titanium and other precious metals. Gemstones, one of which was in his room. Real estate. Tax-free copyrights, patents, trademarks. Solar power. The financial institutions on the Moon paid ten percent interest on all investments, and most people with any sense at all were rushing to get in on the excitement and dividends surpassing any and all Earthly lenders.

  The money was pouring into the Moon and simultaneously (how was this possible?) being sucked out, like a black hose had stretched all the way over to the Blue Planet, filling someone’s pocket on a regular and consistent basis.

  Crass looked up and saw the high space-frame ceiling made of thick glass and white geometrical stanchions that oddly enough resembled a jungle gym. The Sun poked its head over the crest of the café’s rigid framework. He wondered what the temperature might actually be like out on the surface. It was plausible someone here could probably tell him. Maybe even his phone could, if he gave it a shot.

  He fished it out of his pocket and touched a button with his finger.

  “Persona?” he called, and glanced around him. Eva was standing over at the counter, and gazing up at the enormous menu board. “What’s the outside temperature in the Sea of Tranquility?”

  “Checking my sources.”

  A moment drifted by on a careless wind.

  “It’s currently two hundred and fifty-one degrees in the Sea of Tranquility. Expect another ten days, two hours, and thirty-two minutes of lunar sunlight. No expected micrometeorite storms for today’s forecast.”

  Well, that was good wasn’t it? Say, how does tomorrow look? I’m just wondering what the hell we’re going to do if they do decide to start pelting the surface. Could the glass withstand their blows?

  Crass looked up through the glass ceiling again at the Sun. He was thinking of a woman named Ann Hodges. He had Captain Harrison Spade to thank for that.

  On the way back from the excursion to the smaller craters named after the Apollo 11 crewmembers, he’d seen a few hit the surface, not large ones; they were about the size of a small piece of gravel, and he’d asked his question.

  “Is it a regular occurrence for micrometeorites to rain down up here?”

  Harry smiled, and pushed his glasses up on his nose.

  “Well Crass, the Moon has almost no atmosphere at all. Any space debris can just fall through to the lunar surface, which has created most of the upper layer of regolith we’re rolling over right now. Most of this material is burned up before it ever makes it to the Earth’s surface. Some have made it through though.”

  And then Eva asked a good question, but a rather scary one, even for Earth residents.

  “Has anyone on Earth ever been hit by a meteorite?”

  Harry looked at her closely as he turned the volume down with controls on the steering wheel, and then asked a question right back.

  “Are you sure you want to know?” he asked, eyebrows moving higher.

  “Of course.” She twisted her lip and face weirdly. “I’d feel safer knowing if there was or not.”

  “Well, Eva, there have been a few documented cases. The most popular case being an Alabama woman named Ann Hodges, who was taking a nap in her home on a day in 1954 when a softball-size fragment of the Sylacauga meteorite crashe
d through her house. It bounced off a radio and struck her in the side, leaving a nasty mark.”

  Eva was wide eyed and bushy tailed.

  “What did they do with the meteorite?” she asked.

  “Ann didn’t care for the media attention and donated the piece to the Alabama Museum of Natural History, where it’s located at today.” Harry smiled.

  Crass snapped back to the café and saw Eva walking over with two hot dogs. She sat down beside him on a bench not unlike the ones you find in the busy epicenters of America’s shopping malls. She handed him the one with chili, cheese, relish, and a discordant pile of sauerkraut. He took a bite and chili splattered in thick bean pellets to the surface of the paper plate.

  “Did you know the outside temperature is hot enough to boil water?” He was still chewing on a mouthful of bread.

  Eva unfolded a napkin map and dressed her lap with it. She must have had some of that, oh damn, whatdoyacallit?

  Etiquette. Yes. She had dinner etiquette.

  “How did you think we were able to take hot showers, or the cook was able to boil the hot dog you’re chewing on right now?”

  She picked up her hot dog, looked at it cautiously, and took one big girly bite.

  “Atomic water heaters,” Crass replied.

  Eva looked over at him, still chewing and not saying anything till she got her food down.

  “What? Do they even exist?”

  “I don’t know,” Crass said, uncrossing his legs and sitting up on the bench. “Perhaps it does in someone’s mind, huh?”

  Eva took another bite of her hot dog. “Hmmm,” she muttered between bites of bread. “We’ve got atomic bombs and atomic clocks. My grandmother even had an atomic coffee maker from the 1950s!” she said loudly.

  The sound carried across the floor, and bounced off the walls and triangular glass ceiling.

  Fifties…ifties…fties…ties…ies…es…s…

  Crass said: “I don’t think that was really atomic, was it?”

  He rubbed the palms of his hands together and leaned back, finishing off the last bite of hot dog slathered with the messiest of combinations. It was a chili landslide scattered with yellow blobs of mustard; it met the garden (cabbage, cucumbers) on the way down to the soft bread and cylindrical compilation of various farm animals.

  “I doubt it,” Eva said. “Damn, now I want a cigarette. I left my vaporizer at home.”

  She set her empty plate beside her and belched. Not loudly enough to echo across the café this time, but enough to get Crass’s attention. It was a bit unexpected, especially for a girl who took the time to fold out an entire napkin for a tablecloth.

  When she saw him looking, she said “What!? My grandmother also told me there is more room outside than in.”

  He laughed. His grandmother also had her own lavish arsenal of sayings and idioms. One, a riddle not far from the one about the writing desk and the crow. Or was it a raven? It went a little something like this: Do you know the difference between your butt and a hole in the ground?

  Then again, on second thought, maybe it was a far cry from the Lewis Carroll rhyme, but a riddle nonetheless.

  Eva crumbled up the napkin sitting in her lap, and walked over to the recycle bin, tossed them inside, and walked back to sit down. She crossed her legs lady-like, one smoothly over the other; the left heel bobbed like a cork on the still waters of a pond.

  “Where did Mickey and Skye get off to?” Crass asked.

  Eva peered at her nails with studying interest. “I think Skye said they were going to the Observation Deck and then over to the theater. I could call her and see wha—”

  “Naw,” Crass interrupted. “Let ‘em do their thing and have some space to themselves tonight. We’ll see them soon enough, I think.”

  “What do you have in mind, Mr. Poet?” She smiled at him with glittery eyes.

  Crass twisted in his seat. “What are you talki—”

  “The message to the hermaphrodite. I counted all hundred and forty characters individually,” she said with a toothy grin. “Are you a multi-millionaire or something? Cuz the message said multi-million status or something like that. The end was even harder to decipher, but I finally got it I think. It made me feel like a tardbaby just reading it once!”

  “The—?”

  Geez. Where in the name of hell did he start with this story?

  “The message was a mockery, a play on words. I was bored the other day and jotted it down.”

  “Ok,” she said. “Soooo, you’re a millionaire in the multi range?”

  Crass thought it over and glanced out the ceiling toward the bright Sun captured in a sea of black the color of charcoal.

  “Some things have developed,” he said at last. “Whether it was here or over there, I don’t know. I just know I wanted to be out of the gambling pits and in cash. The green stuff felt safer, like a warm blanket feels on a cold night. Like shelter in the middle of a meteorite storm, you know?” he asked, turning to look at her.

  Her eyes had turned to crystal globes of realization—the pupils were almost fully dilated, and revealed only a sliver crescent of the shiny green irises.

  “Like the retractable roof they have here?” she asked, clearly excited. “Have you seen it yet?”

  “No, wait. What?”

  “Ze roof, ze roof,” Eva said.

  She grabbed his hand and led them across the floor, towards the outer doors.

  5

  Crass and Eva were heading back towards the room for the MoboGlobal glasses when they saw Mickey and Skye in the brightly lit hallway.

  “What happened to ya’ll?” Crass cried out across the empty hall. They were still moving closer, bringing their individual orbits into contact. Mickey had a white towel thrown over his shoulder and flip-flops on his caveman feet. Skye was on his right, dressed in a two-piece bikini with green entrails of the Aurora borealis trailing across it in translucent swarms; they twisted and turned across her dark skin.

  “She wanted to check out the Observation Deck,” Mickey said. “After she told me they had a hot tub up there, I went back to the room and put on my swimming trunks.” He smiled, showing off a million dollar smile.

  “Are you fuckin kidding me? A hot tub?” Crass asked.

  Mickey straightened the towel out and looked them over for a minute. His long black hair hung in wet strands. He brushed them away from his face as Skye answered the question.

  “Hot tub and a badass telescope,” she said, her eyes as wide as golf balls. “You two need to go check it out. We’re about to go to the pool in the Rec Center and then we’re going to…wait…what are we doing after that?” she asked, glancing shyly at Mickey.

  “Watching Armageddon at the Crescent, having sex, going to eat a midnight snack, and then having more sex probably.”

  He already had his itinerary planned for the night.

  Crass laughed. “In that exact order?”

  Mickey smiled, and looked down at Skye. “Depends on the little lady here,” he said with a distinct southern drawl.

  Skye said: “It depends on how much juice you go in that tank of yours.” She reached behind him and slapped his ass.

  That got everyone laughing. Eva pulled Crass away and said goodbye. She had plans, of which, some people were just now remembering.

  They walked back to A-12’s white door, and Crass opened it with his palm. Eva dashed off to use the bathroom. Too much soda she said, and almost tripped over herself trying to get there. Crass fished down in the book bag for the MoboGlobos. They were there. He put them around his eyes and sat down on the CloudBed for a moment.

  HELLO CRASS

  Blink once, pause, two blinks right eye…

  MENU—the wheel turned slowly, just like the cogs and gears of a large clock. He found what he was looking for and unlocked the door with his special key.

  In the top right-most corner of the right lens, a red light slowly blinked and then minimized, disappearing completely. Eva came out of t
he bathroom, and looked at Crass sitting there in his expensive optic computer glasses.

  “You ready?”

  She twisted her body, and watched him with curious eyes.

  “Sí,” he whispered.

  He followed her out the door, through the hallways of the resort, and out into the main corridor leading to the biggest room in all of the LunaDome.

  The Rec Center.

  6

  The double doors slid open and Crass and Eva walked into the Rec Center that really was much more than that. The ten story structure hosted a tropical rainforest with slender exotic trees stretching to the top of the Dome.

  They followed a wide and lit walkway made of smooth stone as it meandered through the dense and humid climate, and gave way to a rocky cliff overlooking a small ocean with clusters of iridescent coral reef. The path continued out towards a large pool with a diving board as high as the trees in the rainforest. Eva grabbed a rung on the ladder and gazed at Crass for a moment.

  “Are they comfortable?” she asked.

  Crass looked at her through clear lenses. “For the first hour or two they’re not bad. I wouldn’t wear them all day though.”

  “Can I try them out sometime?” Eva asked. Her foot was propped up on the bottom rung of the ladder.

  He heard commotion and the sound of something metallic slapping wood, and rolling over it. Leaning around the base of the platform, he saw a few kids skateboarding on a ramp shaped like a fat U letter. Half pipe, was it? A dude from one of the local shops cut an 1800° turn in the air and landed on the board as if falling from grace on giant clouds of smooth glory.

  “One day soon, maybe,” Crass said, and smiled.

  He stretched his neck to look up at the platform. It scaled a hundred feet or better from the floor.

  He scooted Eva aside and started the climb, first going slow, and then ascending with quicker and quicker strides towards the top. It came into view as he stepped over onto the diving platform. He helped Eva up, and they both started taking off their balance shoes. For cautionary measures, and flight purposes.