It is 0930, and the sun is nowhere in sight; it is almost too dark to see the moondust falling gently outside the 5/7 Habitat viewport.
I am a data entrant at the 5/7 Habitat; my job easily could, and probably should, be done by a machine. But no one has noticed yet, so I will not draw any attention to it. I am far worse than a machine when it comes to implacable inhuman accuracy, but The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and one needs credits to survive in this desolate landscape.
Anyone without the credits to secure room in the 2/7 Habitat would surely freeze and die, and would quite possibly never be found; at least, not without a good reason and a shovel. Often the temperature falls too low for moondust to settle, but there are already layers and layers of it out there, waiting to be blown about by the feeble yet deadly winds of the thin lunar atmosphere. Any merest breath of wind seems to cut through the insulation of your biosuit, cutting at the very heart of you. No one would deliberately linger outside the Habitats; so, no one could find you even on accident for a very long, long time.
My biosuit is dark blue. It is very hard to stand out, when our biosuits make everyone look the same; and the dark color is admittedly not very cheerful. In the long hours of darkness, my biosuit is not in any real way different from the dark gray, brown, or truly black biosuits of those anonymous figures occasionally spotted hustling silently by the viewport. There is no catcalling in space, where no one can see your gender.
It is an isolationist’s dream, up here on the Moon. You can go from your unit in the 2/7 Habitat to your transport module, and from your transport module to your unit in the 5/7 Habitat without interacting with a single soul. Even as your transport module streams alongside hundreds of others, you are alone in the dark, lit only by the command console. Although it is possible to exist without a biosuit while piloting a transport module, it is advisable to wear one just in case; and thus are you further insulated from your fellow humanoids.
Alas, I am no isolationist. I have heard of gentler climes in transmissions from Earth all my life, and someday I might even span the dizzying gulfs to join the people pictured there. Until that time, I log these entries in hopes of making a connection with those on Earth who are still scanning these frequencies; an outmoded form of communication, now rather out of fashion, is my one link to the [very] outside world.
I am a data entrant at the 5/7 Habitat; my job easily could, and probably should, be done by a machine. But no one has noticed yet, so I will not draw any attention to it. I am far worse than a machine when it comes to implacable inhuman accuracy, but The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and one needs credits to survive in this desolate landscape.
Anyone without the credits to secure room in the 2/7 Habitat would surely freeze and die, and would quite possibly never be found; at least, not without a good reason and a shovel. Often the temperature falls too low for moondust to settle, but there are already layers and layers of it out there, waiting to be blown about by the feeble yet deadly winds of the thin lunar atmosphere. Any merest breath of wind seems to cut through the insulation of your biosuit, cutting at the very heart of you. No one would deliberately linger outside the Habitats; so, no one could find you even on accident for a very long, long time.
My biosuit is dark blue. It is very hard to stand out, when our biosuits make everyone look the same; and the dark color is admittedly not very cheerful. In the long hours of darkness, my biosuit is not in any real way different from the dark gray, brown, or truly black biosuits of those anonymous figures occasionally spotted hustling silently by the viewport. There is no catcalling in space, where no one can see your gender.
It is an isolationist’s dream, up here on the Moon. You can go from your unit in the 2/7 Habitat to your transport module, and from your transport module to your unit in the 5/7 Habitat without interacting with a single soul. Even as your transport module streams alongside hundreds of others, you are alone in the dark, lit only by the command console. Although it is possible to exist without a biosuit while piloting a transport module, it is advisable to wear one just in case; and thus are you further insulated from your fellow humanoids.
Alas, I am no isolationist. I have heard of gentler climes in transmissions from Earth all my life, and someday I might even span the dizzying gulfs to join the people pictured there. Until that time, I log these entries in hopes of making a connection with those on Earth who are still scanning these frequencies; an outmoded form of communication, now rather out of fashion, is my one link to the [very] outside world.
More, more, more of this. Pretty, pretty please.
ReplyDeleteI love this.
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