>>> Entry 002_You can trip the light moderate

Yesterday I was walking through the 2nd-level skybridge between the 5/7 Habitat and the Acquisitions and Entertainment nexus, and had to stop when weak but pure sunlight filtered through the safety glass. Color leached back into the world, even if most of it was clinical white and the grim gray of brushed steel. A few other citizens traversing the skybridge were suddenly blooms of color, and I could see their facial features in clear detail. I had to hurry on, because my scheduled midday respite period is only .75 hrs long...and because it is terribly cold in the skybridge, even if it is technically a Habitat-class environment.

I almost hate to admit it; seeing the sunlight again makes me look forward to the Oscillation.

Lunar Base is constructed in the Liminal Illumination zone, the thin band between the light and dark side of the Moon, where the 9% variance of the Moon’s tidal lock with the Earth allows for both days and nights…and, to a lesser extent, seasons. There are two seasons in the Liminal Zone, an unceasing there-and-back-again pattern between mostly-light or mostly-dark; hence “the Oscillation”. Loonies, aka Lunar citizens, get so excited about the Light Oscillation that many services run at limited capacity or shut down entirely at the peak of the Oscillation, so they can go bask in the coveted solar rays.

I'm serious. It's that exciting up here.

When I first arrived on the Moon, I found the Loonies’ mass excitement at the Light Oscillation very quaint. I must admit it, I was downright condescending. Unknowingly saturated with Vitamin D after a lifetime of optimized solar exposure, I could not then feel the biological yearning of a diurnal species being forced to live out of its element for half its life.

Being born and raised on a satellite station, where solar exposure never alternated seasonally, had given me such a reserve of solar nutrition that I could not feel the Loony's hunger for it until several years later…and by then, of course, it was too late. My youthful arrogance and the space winds of chance have blown me to Lunar Base; now I am depleted, underpowered, and cannot help but wonder if I’ll ever make it to Earth. To drift forever behind a desk in the cold dark silence is so peaceful, a death-like lifestyle that is harder to escape than any gravity-well.