365 Ways With Words

Three Steps

It took three steps. The door was passed and out – out into the deep blackness of it all. It didn’t matter how regularly he donned his suit and did the maintenance check, this bit was always the best, the scariest, the most rewarding. It’s why he took the job.

Even on holiday he would dream of this moment, just before the work began when he released the attach-line and free-floated in zero. The deepness and eternity of the fierce stars all around: above, below, left, right, quiet. Absolute quiet. In the second or so before he allowed the control unit to start (and he would sometimes make this moment linger for a few seconds more than was necessary) he was just another element in the void, an insignificant speck of squidgy organic-ness in the vast, still and inorganic magnitude between the stars.

And there in front was the hull covered in dozens of little maintenance units, rushing speedily from one job to another. He was there to check they finished the job, didn’t leave anything attached, and didn’t get confused by bad or conflicting direction. Millions of light years in travel and achievement beyond all imaginings, there was still room for error.

The units were a fascinating spectacle as they sparked and rolled along the surface. Most of the regular work was done under the skin, but each day something had to be checked or replaced along the hull. And that was his job. It still had a certain ‘something’ to it and one or two of the younger Russian bar girls ooh’d and aah’d when he embellished some of his more tricky situations out in zero. There were a few who, perhaps with a little snobbish disdain, dismissed his stories as being of the tall kind, and worse still others saw him as a mere high-tech janitor, but he didn’t really care. The job carried a frissance of danger that nearly always carried sufficient impact on the alcohol- and opiate-opened ears that they listened again to the third or even fourth telling. At that point a smile would always break on his face.

But what he would never relate was the visions. Sometimes, just before he started up the control unit he felt sure he could see something staring back at him from the stars. He never saw eyes or a face as such, but a spooky feeling of an intense observation. The first time he noticed this he was truly scared –scared shitless! Then he tried to ignore it, assuming it was part of the whole fear of spacewalking thing, evidence of space kookiness that some got from working in zero too long. It wasn’t long before he pulled himself together, overcoming this fear well enough to get on with the job in as near a mundane manner as possible, but somewhere behind the bravado the feeling remained – sometimes a low-level recognition, sometimes a concentration-spoiling focus near-impossible to block out. But of course, block it out he did: he had to in order to remain professional. He was a lifer, not some rooky kid spooked by weird thoughts of being watched.

The feeling was one thing, but the ‘thoughts’ were another. These occurred in an undercurrent between his proper focus on the job and the very monotonous checking of code when work was slowing up. If he allowed these thoughts to take over then he began to see flashes and lights and even sounds out beyond the hull of the vessel. Only work snapped him out if it. But even when snapping out of the daydreams and anchored back in the nuts and bolts of the real world he would be momentarily shaken: was he going crazy?

He allowed this to continue for nearly two years. He did his job, week-in and week-out, and saved his salary. He made his payments and made his calls. He allowed himself an alcohol stipend, a ‘girls and rec’ stipend, and the rest he put away. This worked when not alone, when not thinking of his daughter, when not contemplating life at the end of another contract, when not occupied with entertainment. But just before sleep he would feel it again, as real as ever, and his heart would race and his breathing quicken. It was then that what he knew, what he saw and what he felt conflicted. The tension of his experience grew – daily, nightly, hourly. He felt he could keep the lid on it all for now, but deep down realised this could not last for long. Whatever he did, one day it would uncontrollably burst out and wreck everything.

Ageless on the Dark Side

                                        Art thou pale for weariness
                                             Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
                                        Wandering companionless
                                              Among the stars that have a different birth,
                                        And ever changing, like a Joyless eye
                                             That finds no object worth its constancy?

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)                    

I begin today with Shelley because it is apt to this History lecture – the moon's shadow has cast a long shadow upon all our lives since his time.

Imagine if you will on a dark night on Earth not so very long ago looking upwards to see three great cities twinkling in the Earth's vacuous grey shadow. On such an occasion, when the cloudless night sky would silently welcome the moon's rise, an eery dot-matrix face would appear: Tranquility, Serenity and Crisium. So named after their locations in the large mares or stable basaltic plains within which the first generation of Helium 3 mines appeared. These cities were really low-rise luxury residential complexes.

For many on the earth at that time glimpsed them and would be reminded of the old Great Leap, the setting aside of national ambitions for the common good and for the beginning of the manned push into the solar system. For others it was a source of temptation, an escape from a troubled and overcrowded world of constant problems – everyone knew work on the moon was lucrative, even menial work, despite the risks.

From the surface of the moon life on Earth seemed distant, like the staring down at so much bacteria in a petri dish. Yes, all the entertainment and culture came from the surface, but down there were also the innumerable problems of climate, earthquake and tsunami, thievery, murder and rape. The air held pathogens, disease-carrying mosquitoes and infection and the very food was a source of contaminants. It was another world – one gladly left behind. Life on the moon was decidedly better and since only the wealthy could afford such a lifestyle, only the wealthy lived there: and the carefully screened workers who met their needs.

Many of the large gardens were beautiful, even by Earth standards. Amongst the most ostentatious displays of plants, song birds and running water the honoured guest could be mistaken for believing that one was in a grand country park or nature reserve. The best properties took advantage of the view by having visibility domes that took in the view of the glorious rotating view at any time. The Mooners, for that is what they ended up being called, felt a cut above everyone else down below. At first a derisery term, the multi-billionaires quickly adopted and loved it. For no one else was a Mooner.

Beneath the three cities were the nuts and bolts departments that kept the cities working in the manner in which they had been designed. Food manufacture and water recycling, energy storage and maintenance all had to be done without disturbing the opulent lifestylers. It was also here that the workers lived.

At that time the workers looked after all of the physical needs of the Mooners. They provided everything from maintenance of systems to maintenance of structures, from restaurants to room service, from satisfaction of the sexual deviant to spiritual sustenance of the etherially susceptable. Just because the rich Mooners left the Earth, it didn't mean they wanted the pleasures of Earth to leave them. For the workers the univeral roster system of 6-months included one week's holiday, with the option to stay for a further 6 given only after a complete service record and medical proved acceptable. Most stayed if they were able. Indeed, the growth of workers in all sectors was one of the problems with the existing cramped accommodation. The few philanthropic Mooners granted better employee benefits, such as longer rest periods on Earth and better accommodation, however, most of the employers were somewhat uneasy about living quite so close to their employees.

The decision was therefore made to move all the workers away to the other side of the moon, to a new worker city in the Daedalus crater where they would have space, a sky and their own economy. The city was rapidly built and a connecting rapid rail system connected the workers with their jobs in under one hour. With such an arrangement the 6-months limit on each contract was therefore extended indefinitely at the outset and renewal of all contracts. Almost all of the workers, now Mooners in their own right, happily accepted and settled into a new if remote life.

This greatly improved things. More luxury housing was constructed with the accompanying infrastructure and extra employees who lived and thrived in Daedalus. Life on the moon just got better for everyone. It has often been described as a golden age, albeit a short-lived one.

You may therefore ask what happened? What changed such a good life for all. Why don't the rich live on the moon anymore? It's such a very different place now.

The answer lies in something at first barely noticed: the workers, those who lived and worked in the dark side crater, were not just happy with their longer contracts and better living conditions, but they seemed not to age. This was only noticed with after the first two or three years. Medical scans showed their bodies remained completely unchanged. Within five years teams of medical scientists were analysing everything from water supply to interplanetary radiation in order to define exactly what it was these people were experiencing, but their studies were disturbingly –at least to them– inconclusive. Others, less scientifically-minded, contributed that the Platonic idea of concentric rings, or celestial spheres, were evident. The moon's celestial sphere was on the cusp of the Earth's ageing and the cosmos's ageless ones. Whatever the cause, those who lived on the far side looked like they would live into eternity whilst the rest below naturally died, just as humans had ever done. The workers were overjoyed to discover that being on the other side meant everlasting life and looked forward to the rest of eternity under an Earth-free sky. As yet, none had considered the problems of eternity. We will discuss these issues in next week's lecture.

The novelty of eternal life, however, changed everything. It caused a rapid cessation in the availability of contracts. Those with permanent residency suddenly realised the value of their circumstance and, quite understandably, did everything in their power to stay put. It also altered their relationships with their employers. They were suddenly at an advantage once it was realised that their bosses would age and die leaving their remains to be sent hurtling towards the sun or stay eternally buried in monumental crater-top tombs, whilst their menial employees would carry on happily living oblivious to age. This began to cause friction. Instant dismissals took on more sinister tones – being taken back to Earth meant being taken back to die.

Tensions arose after the more exclusive Mooner clients began to build second lunar homes on the other side. Although the workers still attended their employees, who never visited their old houses anymore and grew sick of the sight of the Earth, their relationships, now leveled again, took on more distressed tones. For it was reasoned that if the workers continued with their work forever, their income could conceivably also eternally rise, a principle on which some of the employers founded resentment. It seems the rich treasure being richer than others more than anything else. Employee investments in Earth enterprises were therefore suspended for the duration of all contracts. After all, most investment services were owned by their employees. This along with sporadic acts of cruelty on the part of certain employers, may have led to reprisals, but it also led to the foundation of the first informal council of lunar workers and their political representation on all matters. By sheer weight of numbers they could not be ignored. It was the beginnings of lunar government and their representation on Earth and beyond.

And then it occurred to the Mooners that if they built their own satellite, away from the moon but in the same orbit, away from the now firmly established frictions, they could have things as they wanted. The Stanford toruses were constructed and all Mooner wealth was withdrawn, leaving the workers alone to govern themeselves to their hearts' content. Which they did, rapidly exploiting the health benefits, the tourism and scientific and exploratory potentials of looking beyond Earth. All this was done without bloodshed and with clear consciences. I'm a little prejudiced, my father being amongst the first to attend the council.

I began with Shelley's poem wherein he describes the moon as finding 'no object worth its constancy'. I think it's hardly possible that the poet was descibing the perspective we enjoy now, and ever will, but perhaps it is the irony of history that things have turned out quite the way they have. We are Mooners, the envy of humanity, and we truly find no object worth its constancy. Class dismissed.

Three Steps

It took three steps. The door was passed and he was out – out into the deep friction-free blackness of it all. It didn’t matter how regularly he donned his suit and did the maintenance check, this bit was always the best, the scariest, the most rewarding. It’s why he took the job.

Even on holiday he would dream of this moment, just before the work began when he released the attach-line and free-floated in zero. The deepness and eternity of the fierce stars all around: above, below, left, right, quiet. Absolute quiet. In the second or so before he allowed the control unit to start (and he would sometimes make this moment linger for a few seconds more than was necessary) he was just another element in the void, an insignificant speck of squidgy organic-ness in the vast, still and decidedly inorganic magnitude between the stars.

And there before him was the massive hull covered in dozens of little maintenance units, rushing speedily from one job to another. He was there to check they finished the job, didn’t leave anything attached, and didn’t get confused by bad or conflicting direction. Millions of light years in travel and achievement beyond all imaginings, there was still room for error.

The units were a fascinating spectacle as they sparked and rolled along the surface. Most of the regular work was done under the skin, but each day something had to be checked or replaced along the hull. And that was his job. It still had a certain ‘something’ to it and one or two of the younger Russian bar girls ooh’d and aah’d when he embellished some of his more tricky situations out in zero. There were a few who, perhaps with a little snobbish disdain, dismissed his stories as being of the tall kind, and worse still others saw him as a mere high-tech janitor, but he didn’t really care. The job carried a frissance of danger, a thrilling and effortless machismo that nearly always carried sufficient impact on the alcohol- and drug-opened ears that listened to the third or even fourth telling. At that point a smile would always break on his face.

But what he would never relate were the visions. Sometimes, just sometimes, before he started up the control unit he felt sure he could see something staring back at him from the stars. He never saw eyes or a face as such, but a spine-tingling feeling of an intense observation. He freaked the first time he took notice of this: he was truly scared – scared shitless! Then he tried to ignore it, assuming it was part of the whole fear of spacewalking thing, evidence of space kookiness that some got from working in zero too long. It didn’t take him long to pull himself together, quickly overcoming this stupid fear well enough to get on with the job in as near a mundane manner as possible, but each time, somewhere behind the bravado, the feeling stayed – sometimes a low-level recognition, at other times a concentration-spoiling focus near-impossible to block out. But of course, block it out he had to. He was a professional. He was a lifer, not some rooky kid spooked by weird thoughts of being watched.

The feeling was one thing, but his thoughts were another. These occurred in an undercurrent between his proper focus on the job and the very monotonous checking of code when work was slowing up. If he allowed these ramblings to take over then he began to see flashes and lights and even sounds out beyond the hull of the vessel. Only work snapped him out if it. But even when snapping out of the daydreams and anchored back in the nuts and bolts of the real world he would be momentarily shaken: was he going crazy?

He had allowed this to continue for nearly two years. He did his job, week-in and week-out, and saved his salary. He made his payments and booked his regular calls home. He allowed himself an alcohol stipend, a ‘girls and rec’ stipend and the rest he put away. All of this worked when not alone, when occupied with thoughts of his daughter, when contemplating life at the end of another contract or occupied with entertainment, but just before sleep he would feel it again, as real as ever, and his heart would momentarily race and his breathing quicken. It was then he realised what he knew, what he saw and what he felt were in conflict and the tension of this experience was growing – daily, nightly, hourly. He could keep the lid on it all for now, but deep down realised it just couldn't last that much longer: whatever he did, one day soon it would uncontrollably burst out and wreck everything.