LunaDome: A Novel

by Olin, a. Paul

  A set of gliding wings were attached to the rails on both sides. From tip to tip, the length of the wingspans was about twelve feet or so. They were solid white with the LunaDome emblem tattooed on both sides.

  Crass helped Eva slip into hers. She walked barefoot out on the platform, heading towards the grainy foot of the diving board. He slipped his wings on and walked up behind her slowly. He felt light, as light as a feather.

  “I dreamed about this the other night,” Crass said, pushing the glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “We weren’t here exactly; we were flying at the South Pole.”

  “Really?” Eva moved her arms, flapping the wings slightly.

  “Yeah, you were at least. I jumped off and my right arm screwed up in flight,” he said with a sigh. “Crash and burn, baby.”

  “You’ll do great here. It’s just like when you first learned how to swim. That’s what the safety video at Innsmouth said. Brett about had an anxiety attack after that little cinematic beauty.”

  She laughed as Crass eased his hand in the small of her back, and pushed her further towards the edge of the platform. They were looking over the swimming pool and the small-scale desert right past it. The skateboard park was positioned in the far corner, next to the little ocean and the metal outskirts of the building. Sunlight blazed through the glass panels and over the miles of dull regolith.

  “What are y—?”

  “Just go,” he said. “I’m following your lead Doc-tor.”

  “Don’t call me t—”

  “Ok, Eva. I fell asleep during the safety video. Thought you might want to know that before I jump off this platform.”

  He flapped his wings a little, almost feeling the weightlessness surging through his body. Soon he’d truly know what it was all about.

  “What?” Eva snapped back, turning her face against the sunlight and peering at him from her peripheral vision. “You didn’t watch the video about the LunaDome and all those stupid safety precautions?”

  “The only reason I talked Brett into riding to Innsmouth with me was the video I saw on Facesnap Thursday morning. I was scrolling through my newsfeed when I saw it. It was an ad for a travel company out of Florida. They had a real catchy name…Lunar Explorers…or something?”

  Crass shook his head. “They’re called LunAucity XCursions.”

  It was slowly bubbling to the surface now, and coming in intermittent waves like torpedoes fired spasmodically out of underwater submarines.

  “That’s the one,” she said, facing forward now.

  Her hair hung in a ponytail, and dipped down her back in a dark-brown curly loop. A brunette rooster tail.

  Crass seized it, tugged it a little bit, and walked up closer behind her. “Hey, listen would you? I’m getting kinda anxious up here. Where is this dome roof you were talking about earlier when we were eating?”

  “Don’t be such a pansy,” Eva said quickly. “The roof is buried down in the regolith except for about four feet of it, which is that concrete wall thing you see past the stanchions and glass windows, towards the bottom.”

  “See it?” she asked. “It skirts the entire perimeter of the LunaSphere, our breathable and artificial biosphere. When they pick up large meteor storms or solar flare levels going haywire on their spectrometers or whatever they have in there, they raise the dome up which shields the place from any catastrophic damage.”

  “Ahhh…an insurance plan?”

  “Précisément, Crass. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She looked up at the ceiling with wondering, glassy eyes.

  “Yeah. It’s great. Can we get the hell off this platform now?”

  Eva laughed and walked forward, giving her wings a little flap of motion. Crass felt the whispers of air moving across his skin.

  “Of course we can,” she said, and jumped off the platform.

  She spread out her giant wings and soared through the air like an eagle, with the dive of the Peregrine falcon, and the swift agility of a great Albatross. She climbed high over the ocean, cut left and swooped down, then back up, over the stony path in the rainforest, and further out to places he couldn’t see yet.

  But they were there, and he would see them just as soon as he made the decision to jump off the platform and take a few flight lessons from ze Doc-tor. Missus Eva Damn Morrows, who suddenly popped into his life early Friday morning. Much earlier than he remembered now.

  When had they left Innsmouth? He remembered it was an early departure to really get the full extent of the three day purchase price. That whopping 450,000 acre of Bitcoins that brought him here.

  Holy shit! he thought. How much did this trip really cost him? He didn’t know, and he’d rather not be entertaining the thought, wondering how much cash that really was.

  Crass scooted closer to the edge, and saw Eva flying back toward him, circling and making a loop in a giant white arc across the sky. It read LunaDome.

  Well, hello LunaDome! I’m Crass Goddam Duvall. How do you do?

  “Would you quit screwing around and get up here,” Eva yelled from high up over the pool. “There’s nothing like it,” she screamed, soaring right under the ceiling now. “Not even sex. WHooooOOOoooOO!!”

  Now he had to know. He leapt over the edge before he had time to think any more about it.

  He was flying…NO, NO…this was falling…falling again…falling with sty…and flapping his wings, YES, he had wings and he was as light as the book bag on the shoulders of a college dropout. He knew better than anyone what that weight felt like. It was light, careless, and he was free.

  Crass was far from the Blue Planet over the horizon and flying by natural laws. Orville and Wilbur Wright would have loved this place, he thought.

  He soared, coasting over the small ocean with rainbow spotted coral reef jutting up like the large pipes on a church organ. He moved the wings again with long, swift pulls, flying higher and trying to catch up with Eva. She cut an arc at the other end of the pyramid-like structure, and was flying back over the savannah and large plot of brown soil intended for agriculture.

  There were all kinds of plants being harvested and planted by four workers in their normal, everyday clothes. One of them, a girl with a blonde ponytail and khaki shorts, watched him fly by with curious eyes. He got closer, and saw she was waving at him.

  It was QT from Grifters. She had bulky work gloves on, and gripped a cultivator tool in her hand. Three tines were caked and layered with soft brown chunks of earth. Crass nodded lightly, and smiled. She was cute.

  And he…well, he was high wasn’t he?

  He flapped the albatross wings and caught up with Eva for a conjoining flight.

  A close, neighborly orbit.

  7

  After the flight at the Rec Center was over, and Crass and Eva were well on their way to the rest of the night, they went back to Eva’s room on C-block, while she changed into her bikini of the cosmos.

  “I’m ready,” she said, handing him a white sleeve of terry cloth.

  “They have moisture-activated rugs,” he said. “Go look in the bathroom. We don’t need towels unless we’re going to kill somebody. We’re not killing anyone, are we?” Crass asked.

  “I doubt it,” Eva said. “You’re right, let’s leave them here.”

  She threw the towel on the floor like a used Christmas wrapper.

  Crass added to the heap and they left back out, heading towards the main lobby, and winding through bright hallways with black and white doors. They eased by the FloorBots as they sped by quietly, and finally made it to the door marked Observation Deck, Shoes Required!

  A white door with a black porthole disappeared into the recess of the wall. Crass walked in first, observing it was mostly darkness with cascading shimmers of sunlight tracing over the narrow walkway. It was like a dark cave, or the basement of a building.

  In the middle of the room was a spiraling and wide staircase with guardrails circling about, and slithering all the way to the top deck, hoisted ten stories near the pa
ramount of the Dome filled with tiny triangles of glass. It strangely reminded him of the Pyramid at Giza. Pipes ran down the walls and skittered across the ceiling in tightly packed bundles.

  “Time to climb,” Eva said with a sigh. “Again.”

  “Fun times,” Crass replied, and ran up the stairs. He’d already prepared his shoes for this dashing moment.

  After the last stair was climbed, the deck opened into a wide corridor like the one down below in the lobby. The door in front of them read Hot Tub for Residents Only! There were other doors, a few offices and some storage areas, but they’d come here to get their asses wet and paid them no mind.

  Crass touched the button on the wall and the door disappeared. Eva walked in the room, and sat down on the bench with plush seating. He stuck his hand down in the rapidly rolling water. It felt like the hands of a thousand beautiful chiropractors.

  “How is it?” Eva asked. She slipped off her shoes, and let them rest on the bench.

  “Divine,” Crass said. “Like the hands of a thousand Asian women.”

  He slipped out of his shoes and hopped over in the rolling warmth, and then he dove underneath the wash of bubbles, and came back up quickly.

  Eva was leaned over testing the water, and blocking his view of something on the wall behind her. It appeared to be rolling?

  “It’s so warm and prickly,” Eva moaned, still feeling the edge of the water.

  “It’s just water, my God!” Crass smiled. “Climb on in. It’s kind of like flying, you know. Sometimes you have to leap before you look…or whatever. Geezus, it must be getting late.”

  He yawned and watched Eva slowly make her way into the water’s depths. As slow as Christmas, but twice the fun.

  She edged over closer to him, glancing wide eyed at the left wall.

  “Crass!” she exclaimed, rising up out of the water. “Look at that.” Crass looked over at the wall where she was pointing. There was a large painting with bold and colorful fishing boats laid upon a sandy beach foreground. Beyond them, rocking over the waters of the Mediterranean, were more vessels out for the day’s work. The clouds above them swirled, moving on the canvas as if stirred by a gentle wind.

  “It looks like a Van Gogh again,” Crass said, meeting her gaze. “The one over here does, too.”

  Eva turned and inspected the other painting on the opposite wall. Crass noticed there was also an old widescreen television on the wall in front of him, and a black periscope receding out of the ceiling.

  “Café Terrace at Night,” she said, and submerged her body until it was just her head and hair above the water, that and her narrow shoulders.

  “I remember studying it in Art History,” she said. “See the people outside at the little tables next to the street?”

  Crass nodded at her. Some were crossing the road, probably long before idiots with their noses stuck in cell phones became an immediate danger.

  “I always wondered what they were eating,” Eva said with squinty eyes.

  “They’re not,” he said, feeling the warmth of the water. “They’re drinking, naturally. It’s at night in France.”

  Eva giggled. “Hmmmm. That’s a good observation.”

  She rolled her eyes and then steadied them. “Is that the telescope?”

  Crass tilted his head and looked. “I believe it’s called a periscope. They have them on submarines.”

  “I know that, asshole!” she yelped. “I just didn’t know what the fuckin name for it was!”

  “Don’t get your solar system panties all into a wad, Eva,” he said smoothly, and swam over to observe through the magnified periscope’s lens. “Geezus.”

  It was aimed at Earth. Tokyo and the Eastern world were currently enjoying their Sunday mornings.

  Eva swam through the warm surf, and over to Crass, almost beating him out of the way to have a look into the strange device. It ran up through the ceiling like the exhaust of an old kettle stove. Black, starry midnight.

  “It’s so beautiful from here, dude,” Eva said. “Makes me kind of miss the place, sorta I guess, although I’m not very excited about going back tomorrow. I think I could stay here another week or two.”

  “The quiet is unbeatable,” Crass said. “Stellar, if I’m being honest with you. I wonder what’s on the TV?”

  “Same shit. Get Persona to bring up LunaTube. Have you seen it yet?”

  “Mickey told me some about it the other day, but I don’t remember.”

  He brought up Persona on the blank screen. Eva was right in his ear now, right up in that comfortable little intimate zone, and what was that? Was that a hand running up and down and caressing his legs? Cuz it damn sure felt like it.

  “It’s got two hundred and fifty channels,” Eva said, moving her hands under the water. “Everything and anything you could want to watch concerning the Moon.”

  “No shit, huh? It sounds like something I’d like to watch.”

  Crass flipped through the channels. And flipped through until he came to something different. The color had disappeared from the screen, and a black and white film was playing.

  “You’ve got to keep it here now,” Eva said, and gave him a serious look. “I adore this movie.”

  He kept the channel right where it was. It was a familiar movie, and one getting close to turning a century old. They watched in silence (most of the time), and twenty minutes later walked back down the stairs and out into the main corridor facing the gift shop—Grifters Unltd.

  A steel door had been pulled down over the entrance, but they looked through the windows and caught a glimpse of the flag out on the lunar surface. It was right past the bookshelves and the large glass windows, planted down in the soft layer of regolith. It looked suspended in time, a perfect moment frozen and stilled on the Moon.

  Sixty years ago they’d planted it out there.

  He was thinking this later when walking back to the room with Eva on his side.

  She grabbed his hand without warning and escorted him back to the room in soft steps like a kitten. They slid behind the door and rolled over in the CloudBed together, falling asleep quickly and all but forgetting about sex, for a little while anyways.

  The Moon could wear you out, and quickly.

  XIV: Rocket Home

  1

  Crass rolled over on the bed, blinked his eyes open slowly, and sat up. He looked around the room dubiously.

  Oh yeah. That’s right, I’m on the Moon. That’s why everything looks so different.

  Over by the far wall, the television’s screen slowly blinked the LunaDome emblem in a bouncy rhythm. Sunlight spilled through the automatic blinds, and sliced themselves into white horizon lines on the adjacent wall. He put his space shoes on and walked to the bathroom.

  After the ritual was done for this morning, he came out and saw Eva slowly stirring awake on the Cloud.

  Why did she even get a room? he thought. She’s stayed here more than there.

  “What time is it?” she asked, yawning with a wide stretch of the arms.

  “Let’s see, huh? Buenos dias, Persona. Could you please tell us the time?”

  Persona flashed on the screen in a jiffy, her blond hair paraded around her like blooms on flowers in the spring. The ponytail was long gone.

  “It’s 8:37, Eastern Standard Time, and a beautiful Sunday morning at the LunaDome. There are nine days, six hours, and seven minutes left of the lunar day. Would you like to hear another poem this morning? I found one the other day I think the both of you may like.”

  Eva said: “I never turn down poetry. Go for it.”

  She was slipping into her shoes.

  “Ok,” Persona replied. She smiled, and then disappeared behind the transient screen, coming back quickly.

  “I’m sorry, you guys. It’s not a poem, but it’s still an excellent quote from an Irish playwright named George Bernard Shaw. He said: I don’t know if there are men on the Moon, but if there are they must be using the Earth as their lunatic asylum.”<
br />
  Crass laughed. “Now there’s a good one Persona. Thanks.”

  “You’re most welcome, Crass. Is there anything else I can help you with before I go?”

  “Just checkout time,” he said, looking over at Eva.

  She was picking up scattered clothes off the floor with her ass bent towards him in a tiny thong that slipped fluently between the tan mounds of flesh. A very nice posterior. Maybe she’d done some of that implant surgery down at the clinic where she worked.

  No, he thought. That’s not it. That’s a stupid idea. There’s more going on there than that. She ate her vegetables and mashed potatoes and that’s all there is to it.

  He was still checking her out. Where he’d just set foot the other day and yet, it still pulled his eyes like they were attached to an invisible and winding reel inside her.

  “10:00 a.m. checkout.” Persona rang back. “Does this help?”

  “Yes,” he said, breaking his concentration. “Thanks again.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replied. “Adios.”

  And Persona disappeared, vanishing into the screen somewhere.

  Eva was fully dressed now and looking at Crass with eyes that still had little balls of sleep in the corners.

  “I’m going to my room to take a shower. Want to meet me at the café in thirty minutes?” she asked, walking to the door.

  Crass touched the screen with his palm. She walked outside and stopped, turning to gaze into his stony-eyed expression.

  “Yeah,” he said, gripping the wall with his hand. “I’m going to do the same and pack all my stuff up for the trip back.”

  “Ok. I’ll see ya soon then.”

  She walked off down the corridor, heading for C-Block.

  The door closed behind him, and he walked back towards the bed, spotting the Shackleton Stranger sitting all by its lonesome on the loveseat. It didn’t weight much here, but once it made it back to Earth (in his bookbag), it was going to be like trying to carry a small motorcycle. He’d nearly forgotten the damn thing, though he doubted he would have missed spotting the golden boulder sitting there on the cushion. The Elephant Man was its name. A cratered and chunky protrusion of metallic rock obtained from the Moon—from Earth’s closest neighbor.