The Moon Bearer

Information technology was the most thankless mission human beings had ever attempted, but Stephen Coyne thought of himself As the right on rib for the job.

"A small step for a man," he hissed into the intercommunication system as his leash-loaded soles stepped forbidden of the airlock and sank into a dusty, malleable rock surface far more pristine than human history knew. Maybe someone at military mission control would appreciate the joke, atomic number 2 intellection. Just to eliminate the fatuousness of the enterprise.

Navajo Indians say the moon is the handcraft of the Prototypal People on ground, World Health Organization produced two discs out of a slab of quartz and put option them along top of the highest mountains in the eastmost. The first same, the Sun, would bring heat and light to the people; the forward unitary, the Moon, coolness and moisture. Cardinal wise work force steered the wheels through the heavens: the Sun Bearer and the Moon Carrier.

Steve wondered how Mr. Armstrong must receive matt-up, 50 years agone, as he entered the secret studio to hoist himself into his space case, knowing helium was near to displume the biggest clowning on humanity anyone had of all time attempted. Atomic number 2 tested to imagine what Satchmo did afterward the shoot, when helium had to wait for the unmanned Apollo 11 to dab into the seagoing earlier he was finally allowed publically again. Perchance he took the time to reread For Whom the Alexander Bell Tolls or A Farewell to Weaponry, he pondered, thinking for no reason whatsoever that Armstrong was a Hemingway man, smoking Arturo Fuente cigars with affected role zestfulness.

He wasn't sportsmanlike here to collect rocks and other materials that could eventually exist properly studied; his feet stood here, as the showtime ones to ever walk on non-terrestrial ground, to at length make over good along all the lies.

Headwaiter Onida should see this, Steve thought, looking over the vast crunchy valleys of dust. He wondered wherefore his commander suddenly distinct non to leave the ship subsequently landing. During training at Cape Kennedy, it seemed like this undisclosed request was on the nose what Onida was whelped for. Steve's commanding officer was a secluded, profound and spiritual man, nonpareil of the a couple of people in this modern age who still dared to outsource a large chunk of his morality to an outside party. For an ex-man WHO had committed himself to a space geographic expedition computer program, he had little make love for modern times. As a matter of fact, he despised them. He felt like the really utmost remnant of an antediluvian, out civilization, ravaged by the modern desolations of machinery and greed.

Helium told glorious stories, wondrous ancient chronicles solidified by millennia of oral lore. Steve remembered how he, with almost tearful regret in his eyes, divulged the floor of the Tl'éhonaa'áí, or Moon Bearer. "You think we'll see him when we state there?" Steve asked bitterly.

Right away that they had actually landed on the moon's surface, atomic number 2 didn't even want to leave alone the cockpit. Nonnative, if exclusive because he didn't find out the captain as someone who chickens out when moments of truth stand before him.

"Listen", Steve's voice crackled through the ship's intercom. "I'm tired, Captain Onida didn't spirit like leaving the ship today and Ecclestone looked … well, funny after the landing. Why wear't I upright take a little walk and return to the ship, and we'll Set things upbound in the morning?"

"Steve, you'll sole be there for five days", answered Mission Control. "There's a lot of work to beryllium done."

"We'll work real degenerate. How hard can this be? We just now get to unload a gang of stuff."

"Alright. But keep goin in touch, ok? See what the problem is with the captain and Ecclestone when you're dorsum. Report back to us if anything, anything looks even remotely wrong. Is that clear"

"Yea."

"We have to exist careful."

"I know. It's not like we've done this in front."

"Pull through it, Steve. Promise you'll keep in touch?"

"Promise."

"Out."

***

Earth looks intimidating from here, Steve thought. Not only because it's almost fourfold bigger than the moon looks from the Earth's coat; somehow, if you took sufficient distance from information technology, Earth looked like a badly unbroken home. If I was an surplus-terrestrial with half a brain travelling through with space and revealed this barely evolved form of light life history, he thought, I'd be a malicious bastard to the lot of them.

When Julia was buried, atomic number 2 found himself staring at the sinking feeling casket, thinking unholy thoughts about Anji, a zany bookman of his with her foolish crush on him and their silly consumption of carnal sympathy. Atomic number 2 vacillated between heartbreak and repent, even at this grave moment where his feelings should have been obvious. He still loved Julia, even through all the fighting and the unpleasant make-calling of the last 2 years, and Anji was a mistake. But his real sin wasn't the bodily affair: IT went deeper than that, all the mode to the dank catacombs of his character.

The year he met Julia was 2000. They were on the train from Baltimore to Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe; he Sat stifled in a window seat, while she plopped herself down future to him, blabbering away into one of those early in-person communication devices. He overheard her talking about how she had knocked herself out partying the preceding night and had overslept, and how she was now along her way to a graduation ceremonial where a master's in geology waited for her. Her admirer skint the news program that she was too belated: She had already graduated, cum laude, as it happens. Nil in the world was imperative anymore for her at this distracted, glorious, extraordinary moment. Time was of none difference.

"Extolment," he said the second she clicked disconnected the phone, and instantly regretted his intervention. This is a moment she will treasure forever, he view, a moment she send away conjure in ineffectual conversation. And I'm ruining it.

But she was likewise elated to bear in mind the intrusion. "Thanks," she even retorted graciously. At that place was quiet and self-consciousness during the first few minutes, merely away the end of the ride neither unrivalled of them felt difficult when he asked her, still quite nervously, for her drawing string of numbers.

At this moment in time and space, 16 years later, atomic number 2 had so piddling to misplace that accepting an idiotic missionary station like the job at hand was unchaste. The three of them didn't have a bomber's welcome to look forward to after the ship returned to Dry land. Their mission was clear: Get concluded there, drop off some choke up that everyone thinks we already left and come back ahead Musk's in private-closely-held, stock-market-floated rocketmen reach the place.

At the Kennedy International Airport training readiness he arrived a free and purified man, having sold nearly all of his possessions and tied the home helium had lived in with Julia. At Kennedy he met James Onida and William Blake Ecclestone. Both of his fellow crewmen had dropped out of something as well: the army, from which Onida was honorably discharged aft an incident in which he had used physical force against a superior officer; and aliveness, something that Ecclestone, the bon vivant Scottish geologist, had a mode of unceasingly and cleverly eluding.

Steve began to bond with Onida, World Health Organization divulged lots of stories to him. Epic accounts of the deeds and feats of his ancestors. Eloquently told Navajo myths. But too very personal accounts: about his father, who broke a centuries-long-life lineage of chieftainship by opening a casino adjacent Lake Powell. About his grandfather, who served during the 2d World War as a code talker out of authenticated disdain for the machineries of evil that were sodomizing Europe, and WHO – after the infract with his own firstborn – frequently made contact with his grandson to preclude the father's capitulation to greed and novelty from jeopardizing the spiritual exploitation of the son.

By the time He arrived back at the ship, he had done a serious walk, one that pushed the limits of the personal life support system of rules collective into his suit. He made a psychic mark to laden the stamp battery entirely this time.

Atomic number 2 ambled rearmost to the transport airlock through and through the rubble. The melodic phrase inside his helmet became solid; he could almost snatch it with his speak up.

***

The gun is the brag of Onida. It's in his hand, controlling his mind. It wants him to seduce a choice. A quote from Konrad Lenz, Steve's favourite behavioral scientist, comes to his idea: "The first achievement of accountable esprit de corps in the history of mankind was the fixing of the disturbed equilibrise between weapons and the in-dropped reserve to kill." The invention of weapons has made non killing someone a rational determination.

"Onida? Explain the throttle."

"Please. Don't make this so surd."

"What are you talking about? What are you doing? Where's Ecclestone?"

"Are you a religious man, Steve?"

"Onida, for the last time: Contribute me that gun."

Steve thinks about stepping forward, but then helium thinks once again. It's Onida's eyes. They mean business; dead serious personal matters.

"Okay. Satisfactory. Smooth. What exactly are you going to do?"

"The work on of God, Steve. Man is non supposed to visit the stars. They are non our place."

A rage builds in Steve's veins.

"Onida, utter sense! Okay?"

"That might be the problem. You might not understand," the dominating officer replies stoically.

Steve goes to the dinner party remit and sits down, cold sweat trickling down his cheek. He has never felt comfortable in an ambience that was artificially pressurised.

Onida takes the chair before of Steve, still toting the gun just no more pointing it at him. Steve rubs through his hair.

"Where's Ecclestone?"

"In his bunk," Onida answers, looking at the floor.

Steve starts sobbing.

"He struggled. I had to. I suffocated him after the guessing so he suffered as little as likely. He died for a good cause. I'm … I'm going to come world a real pleasure," Onida continues. "I'm gonna make sure they keep their sentience of wonderment. I'm going to foreclose them from pretending to be the gods they once worshipped. When I'm through with here, citizenry are going to trust the divine once once again. They are uncomprehensible children, Steve. We have to give them their souls back. Going into space means the death of every god once idolized. Non just Cornbeetle Young woman and Pollen Boy. But the gods your ancestors worshipped, too."

"And then what do you do? You go up into space and stamp out two masses? What fucking difference do you hope to make here, you sick psychotic bastard? What the fuck is evil with NASA, anyway? They drop billions of dollars along finally putting a junkheap of a embark on this piece of rock, but give to cut their expenses on psychologically screening their personnel?"

Yes, atomic number 2's crying at this man now. At this capturer, this individual that goes on the far side every last identity. Onida can't pull downright on me anymore, Steve thinks. The gunslinger agency helium no more runs the show. He needs the sanguineous thing. This mission, the one as we know it, is … well … over. He'd have to threaten me with his accelerator to make me do anything.

"I'm killing this mission," Onida says with a violent finality. "The radio's already dead. I'm taking away, right directly, and flying this thing into space with our cargo. That moneyman, Musk, and his men bequeath project that No man has ever been on the moon, and everyone on earth will know the futility of nerve-racking to turn over the stars. Humankind will be better for IT."

Steve looks at the gun, perfectly within his reach. He thinks about the sound citizenry on Earth, who trust their bosses and heroes and leaders and gods, who have needs that are created by the very the great unwashe who provide the solution to them. His rationalizing interior somebody takes over: There's nothing to fight for Here. Nothing to fly back to.

"You know what, Onida?"

"What?" Onida inquires, surprised atomic number 2 stil hasn't made his stop.

"I'm outta here."

***

The ship leaves with Onida and Ecclestone's body in it, a tomb of iron. Steve hears the bursts of energy only in his mind.

He looks at Ground. Atomic number 2 feels the ship's company of his own hint.

There are still lots of options for me, Steve thinks. I stern do an awful lot of things. I crapper take a really long stroll, a very long nap in the sprinkle. I can strain to jump hard enough to defy the weakly gravity of the moon, and swim home through the stars. This plaza is entirely mine.

This liveliness is all mine.

Ronald Meeus is a freelance writer residing in Belgium. Atomic number 2 can be reached at ronald.meeus@skynet.be.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-moon-bearer/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-moon-bearer/

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