Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:43:25 -0500
From: ainsleystories@cox.net
Subject: POST APOCALYPTIC MOON - THE NEW MOON [total story of 2 chapters by Ainsley for science fiction section]
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are
the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot
are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with
the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright
infringement is intended.
This is a work of imaginative fiction. The characters are not people
in real life and are not meant to represent real people, alive or dead.
The sex, sexual orientation and preference of any of character is for theme
or plot development. This story involves people in homosexual lives and
loves. No one in this story who engages in sex is below the legal age of
consent nor are they below the age of 18 years.
I have written other books that have been published and are adult gay
sex novels. They are for sale on Amazon.com under the pen name of Ainsley.
The title is the "Space Adventure of Alex." It is a science fiction story
that takes place 500 years in the future. It is filled with sex and love.
The most important of which is love.
I have also written the story in the science fiction section calld
"The Diary of a Mad Man"
POST APOCALYPTIC MOON - THE NEW MOON
Probably no one will ever read this account of the end of the Moon. I
suppose I am writing it because that is what I do. I am a writer. Not a
published writer or necessarily even a good writer, but I have all the
credentials in the world and certainly off world. I write. I have been
writing since I was little and it is both my passion and my pastime. I am
only just 18 and therefore don't have to do anything officially yet. I am
18 Standard Earth Years old. That's 18 STY or 18 standard years. I guess
I should be older and have more experience to draw from to write this, but
I don't. I don't really know what to write about, so I used to write about
my feelings. At that, I am an expert. I have lots of feelings, mostly not
so good feelings. However, this is a different story. This story is about
my feeling, but it has another purpose. My feelings are just a small part.
This time I have something to write about and my feelings are such a small
unimportant part. It is a long story and I guess I will get to it in my
own way. I have to tell it my way, because that is all there is left.
Yes, I guess I will explain that too and it still won't make any sense, but
at least you will know that I am not crazy. I won't know, but then; I
don't care. I would tell you the year, but that is not even important.
Sure, you think it is, but it really isn't and that will become plain and
all to abundantly clear also. Yea, I am not telling you anything. Just
hang in there, because nothing really makes any sense even to me. And I
know that I am not crazy. Everyone else around me is crazy and I can prove
it. I wasn't the one who did this crazy shit, but then again, neither were
you if you get to read this. I need to blow off some steam, so I guess I
will start not at the beginning, but about a lunar ago. Yes, I said a
lunar ago. This is about the death of the Moon and time on the Moon is
marked in lunars. I live on the Moon and I keep Moon time. If you are
from the Earth and are reading this, then all is not lost and things are
not that bad. Or maybe they are, but you overcame them and are reading
this.
It all started a long time ago. There were not too many people on the
Earth. Then they multiplied and their numbers grew. That would have been
fine. The problem was that some people were not content to live and let
other people live in peace. I am not talking about wars as there have been
wars since the beginning of recorded time. I imagine even before the
beginning of recorded time people fought. I am no student of history or
warfare. I hate politics and all that crap. Actually, I like crap, real
crap, or in polite terms that's manure or feces. The crap I hate is the
artificial stuff that they package to try to get you to believe in it. I
suppose that is why I have to start about a lunar ago. Then I have to tell
you all about myself, what I do and how I make a living for all this to
even begin to make no sense whatsoever. I am a lunatic as we call
ourselves. I live in the Moon. I don't live on the Moon; nobody lives on
the Moon. Or if you do, you have a storm cellar close by. No, not a
weather storm cellar, but one for solar storms. It is funny, mankind
learned about gamma ray bursts in the middle 20th century and they worried
about them and other dangers like meteorites coming for Earth. They had
grand plans to head off problems if they could and what to do to repopulate
the Earth from a gamma ray burst. Well, hello. This one you should have
seen coming a billion no, a trillion miles away. It had been building for
about 7,000 years.
Back to the history lesson. When man finally decided to believe in
only one God as opposed to gods, we generally thought that was a step up in
the evolutionary chain of events. Wrong. Well, like taking one step
forward and two backwards. Sure, mankind got the one God theory down pat,
then he screwed it up with sex, love marriage and all sorts of ticky rules
that God supposedly handed down at the same time. Look, I happen to
believe in God; maybe you don't. I really couldn't care less what you
believe, but I wasn't there when he chose to speak to mankind. I just can
not imagine that when God was handing out the rules, he gave them such
picky, tricky and stupid rules. It just doesn't make sense. They
restricted sex for only during marriage. I can live with that, but death
to people who get a divorce and to adulterous people. Death to gay people,
death to children who curse their parents or God. Death for so many things
was the called for punishment for any infraction of the edicts. God was
petty, vicious and vindictive. I think they could have picked a fairer and
nicer God. Sort of like a very strict, ultra conservative parent or worse
yet, a grandparent. Grandparents have no patience with children. They
already raised their own and if you get out of line they want to get rid of
you. They threaten you with the wrath of God and eternal damnation if just
sending you to your room isn't enough. My grandmother was different as she
was a real saint. She loved me and was wonderful even when I was being a
real bastard. I was; I was a little kid. I think it comes with the
territory too. I remember. She would take me to her and hug me and talk
to me and I would feel really sorry for giving her such a hard and
difficult time. I loved her. I think now she is gone and it is probably
better that she is gone.
Back to the next history lesson. So the first monotheistic religion
screwed up sex, love, marriage, and their God handed down I think it was
603 commandants or rules. You had to keep the Sabbath holy and all that
stuff. The religions from the East, did not all screw up sex and love as
bad, but I will get to them. Then the next major religion came along about
3,500 years later or thereabouts. He changed some of the rules about what
you could eat, but he kept in the sex, marriage and gay hate stuff too. At
least his followers said he did. He said to keep the Sabbath holy, but his
followers changed the Sabbath day go figure. Then 600 years later another
religion sprang from this one and they hated gays even worse and had more
rules and problems. They exported hate in the name of their religion.
They even said it was all right to kill in the name of their God as long as
you killed the nonbelievers. Then about 1000 years later someone came by
and tried to reform the second religion while the world had had a split in
the second religion between two different cities. The second religion was
battling the third religion for their holy land. Well, the second religion
sort of took over the economic power of the world and influenced all other
religions and so everybody was screwing up sex, love, marriage and fucking
with gay people at the same time. So now the sum total of the recorded
history of mankind, about 7,000 years, give or take a thousand, is screwed
up over God, who is the right God and what God said. Mankind spent an
inordinate amount of time worrying about God and what he said and trying to
please God that he ignores the simple problems he can solve. We need to
make sure that people have enough food to eat, that people and children get
an education and then that governments serve the people. Not even the
collective will of the people because if the people want to enslave or kill
a segment of the people, their own people or strangers, we just have to
tell them NO. The last few thousand years has been preoccupied not with
discovering how the world works but condemning those who say it works in
different ways that the religious leaders say that God said or intended for
it to work. That kept us down for a few thousand years. So much for
ancient history and the how we got here lesson in 500 words or less.
I live in the Moon and my parents are farmers and scientists. We have
a small tunnel farm and I run it. Well, I ran it with my father and
mother. Hence, that accounted for my professional interest in manure in
all its forms and what to do with it. Any good farmer knows that you can't
grow anything without good rich soil. We have lots of good soil in the
Moon, because we make it. We start with the only thing we have to work
with. We start with moon rocks. We grind up the rocks and make a very
fine powder. That power is made up of some of the same things that the
Earth is made up of. In fact, if the large body that struck the Earth
millions of years ago had not run into the Earth, the Moon would not be
here. The Moon is not made of green cheese; it is made up of the same
stuff that makes up the Earth. That is why it is so big, why the Earth's
orbit and the weather are stable, and the Earth is habitable. You already
know this, but I suppose I have to put this in for the record. Perhaps I
might get paid by the word for writing this too.
Rock powder will not grow much of anything. You can grow some grasses
that will grow in just water and use the rock powder and larger rocks as a
substrate for root propagation. The net result is that the soil is
sterile. Thank God that it is too. If it had germs in it from the Moon,
we would all be in a world of hurt. The only germs on the Moon are the
ones we brought from the Earth.
I know; I am getting to the crap. Just be patient. Sorry, I meant to
say manure; I am getting to that and soon it will be coming up in this
rather untechnical technical explanation. I know about this because my
parents are scientists and my father works in this field. I know, I don't
tell people that my father has his Ph.D. in crap. He is actually a genius
in biochemistry and soil chemistry. My mother was his prize student. My
father had only been teaching for two years when they met. They married a
year later and then two years later I was born. When this teaching and
experimental position came up on the Moon, they decided to go and to bring
me with them. I cried for a month. I didn't want to leave all my friends
on Earth and live inside some old fucking rock. You heard me, fucking
rock. I don't care about the bad language as it factually describes how I
felt. Perhaps in looking back I would have not have been so unhappy if
there were lots of fucking going on in the rock. Maybe there was, but I
was not involved in it. In all fairness to my parents, I owe them my life
because they forced me to come to the Moon with them. My father worked on
the team that manufactures what is known as "paydirt" or cultured soil. I
need to explain that too, I suppose. Take out your pens and take notes.
This is not hard to follow, but unless you grew up with it like I did, it
is just a lot of crap making more crap. That is literally the truth.
"Paydirt" was the enriched soil culture designated for the Moon. The
good old fashioned dirt of Earth is wonderful for growing things. Just
about anything, including things that we don't want to grow. Like all
sorts of bad germs they don't have here on the Moon that grow and exist in
Earth's rich very fertile soil. If you cut yourself here, you didn't have
to worry about tetanus, anthrax, rabies and about a hundred other things.
They have the antitoxins stored here for emergencies and everyone here got
vaccinated before coming off world or once here. We want to keep up
mankind's immunity collectively. We never sent the germs to the Moon.
Only the vaccines are here. Also everyone got vaccinated on Earth before
they came to the Moon.
People were not given a choice. If a person got sick and disabled
because of a vaccine, then they were put on a pension benefit and allowed
to earn some money to supplement their income. We still had free
enterprise, but we were wiping out diseases right and left. Mankind was
just not going to take no for an answer and allow some new strain of flu to
kill millions of people. We had a free enterprise system, but we didn't
let that stop us. We never could get rid of the people who run the
government that were getting rich as a result, but we made sure some of the
necessary scientific things got done. We were still struggling with
keeping the peace, or trying to keep the peace going. Back to the crap.
You had to breed "paydirt" about a quarter of a cubic meter at a time.
Each growing season the soil culture would spread and grow and enrich the
soil in a growing pattern out from a core of enriched "live" dirt. I say
alive dirt because the dirt or soli was alive with good useful organisms.
The best thing to make good dirt out of was decaying organic matter. Cow
and horse droppings, decaying vegetable matter, like garbage, uneaten food
stuffs and even human feces assuming your population was healthy. See,
that is where the crap comes in. First, you sterilize the organic matter
to make certain that you don't have any unwanted germs. Then you mix that
together with live soil. Then the live soil spreads and the infection
takes root in all the organic matter in the sterile soil. You have to have
crushed rock as the inert substances to hold all the organic materials.
This was like an old fashioned compost heap on Earth with some very fine
sand. You do this over and over again, that is you let the live dirt breed
and make more dirt until the entire sterile soil or land is composed of
good proven soil. In the mean time, you can grow grasses to hold the soil
physically in place. The root systems are a good prevention to soil
erosion in any form. The decaying root systems provide pathways for the
next crop to send out its roots.
It takes many standard years to improve a large tunnel farm. That is
why father and mother agreed to locate temporarily to the Moon to see if it
worked out. The move was not intended to be permanante otherwise they
would be emigrating from the Earth to the Moon. To the people on the Moon,
we would be immigrating. Me, I considered that I was migrating out of here
as soon as possible. I told you that the English language sucked. The
military hoped that the move would be permanante. Ever since the beanstalk
or carbon fiber stalk was completed ten years ago, we could move large
equipment and supplies to the Moon rather easily. They have dug out on the
Moon about 500 kilometers of tunnels and lots of side tunnels. For his
research, father and mother were deeded the ownership of our tunnels and
all rights were transferred to them. It consisted of about ten major
tunnels plus the housing and supplies for us. This included all the
connecting and side tunnels too. We worked about ten kilometers of tunnels
and lived and stored stuff in the side tunnels. It was all they would even
need for his research and to support us in relative comfort for the rest of
our lives. They really wanted mother and father to stay. I didn't care if
they stayed, but I knew I was headed back home as soon as I could go.
There is essentially no water on the Moon. It all has to be brought in.
At first it all had to be brought up from the Earth by rocket power. That
was a slow and very costly process. The moon recycled all of its water.
It took 50 years to complete the beanstalk and then the goods started to
flow like water, including water. We also had several small comets or
asteroids now circling the Moon in a relatively stable orbit. No, it was
not a cosidence. We captured them and brought them to the Moon to mine for
water. They were not comets traveling around, but more like asteroids of
mostly water that we took out of orbit and brought to the Moon. They were
mostly composed of water. We had lots of them that we had on hand for
additional water. Father bread `paydirt' for the Moon and he was good at
it. In the four short years that he and mother were here, he managed to
single-handedly breed almost all the `paydirt' they needed for the existing
tunnels. He of course had help, mostly me. Father had the assistance of
the military to set up and to do any lifting and moving of things too big
for us to handle. However, once we were in business, it was mostly just
the three of us. I got paid and my money was used to pay for all my
gadgets and toys here on the Moon. I confess that I worked my ass off and
I had all the toys I wanted, or at least the toys that you can buy with
money. The military also let us buy throught their post exchange system so
we got it at their prices and they shipped it to us on the moon at a
nominal cost. They liked us and would do anything to keep us happy. I had
everything I needed and had some money saved up, but I didn't have any
friends. I had some people that I knew and liked, but I did not have any
close friend if you know what I mean. I am not talking friends; I had some
of them. There were some kids about my age to pal around with, but no one
special in my life. I mean a real close friend, someone special just to me
and for me. There just are not that many young people in the Moon for me
to have a special friend. The ones my age didn't live around us. And
there are very few of them in the mood that live in the Moon. However, in
the last six months, they have been bringing people up to the Moon in
record numbers. Things were changing and families were coming to the Moon
to live and raise families. Many of them already had children when they
arrived here. Some even had children that were almost grown and usually
lots of little children following in line behind them. I just did not want
to have to wait for them to grow up.
Well, once you have your good rich "live" soil, it is a simple matter
over the years to move large soil areas to the new unproven areas to seed
them. You could then move back to the proven soil area the new sterile
soil and mix it with what was left of the proven soil. Within one season
or two, the unproven soil would be completely assimilated in the old proven
soil. Father explained it as a snowball effect. You build on the old soil
to make new soil. If you start with one cubic meter and you mix it with
one cubic meter of sterile soil, in one season, you have two cubic meters
of good "live" soil. Then you take that two cubic meters and mix it with
two more cubit meters of sterile soil and then you get 4 cubit meters of
good soil. You keep this up and the effect just multiplies exponentially.
Father was a genius at doing just this. He figured out what the best
conditions were, the optimum time and methods of breeding new soil. He
monitored the pH, the mineral balance and about 50 other parameters. He
taught them to me. He taught them to everyone, but I got to see him doing
it everyday and I got his techniques down pat. He made sure of that. We
didn't need a year of time or an entire season for the cultures to spread.
There are lots of factors to consider. You had to adjust the pH or you
could kill your worms. Worms were essential to spread the infection
faster. Grasses would send out the roots in sterile soil, but the worms
were essential. So you mixed up organic matter in the sterile soil and
also had roots. The roots when the grasses were chopped up decayed and
formed more organic matter. Left in place and not chopped up, they were
like little channels that the infections spread through. Father took the
temperature at different levels and knew just what to do to make the most
out of his worms and his desirable soil infection. He had one entire
tunnel that was just for breeding worms. Then he had several tunnels where
he had back up breeding facilities. He raised worms there too, but part of
the tunnel was for the raising of crops besides worms. You never can have
too many worms. Father's worms were much sought after and brought a high
price. If you knew how to take care of worms, you could get your own worms
to make more of them. However, father could do it faster and cheaper than
you could have your own worms make more worms. I never thought I would
know about the life cycle of worms or even care about it. But I do and it
is interesting and worth a lot of money. Earthworms (now Moonworms) are
hermaphroditic. That means that each worm contains both the male and
female sex organs. However, while they can have sex with themselves, (they
don't go fuck themselves as even worms are not that stupid) I guess they
could, but they don't. So even the humble Earthworms and the Moonworms
want a mate. Some can reproduce asexually (without sex). Moonworms do not
because father picked the best worms and screened them well. While it can
take three to four lunars for a Moonworm to develop fully, given the proper
time, you can have hundreds of little worms from just one pair. Treated
properly, they can live for years. Well, so much for the sex life and love
life of worms. I might as well be talking about my love life. The worms
had more of a love life than I did. I would have been happy digging in the
dirt if I could find sex or love there. I knew this was going to be a
problem when I came to the Moon, but I could not bring myself to tell my
parents about it. I just wasn't ready to bother them about my short
comings or limitations. However, once I got to the Moon, I realized how
limited my love life would be. Then I cried without tears every night. I
figured I could tough it out until I returned to attend college just before
I reach 19 standard Earth years of age. I could get enough college credits
here on the Moon that I could go directly into my junior year and just have
a good time at college and skip the awkward years in college as a freshman.
The beanstalk, and there was only one, was located in Mexico near the
equator for technical reasons. We had enough water stockpiled on the moon
now in air tight containers on the surface to meet our needs for many
years. We stored the water until the new and greatly expanded underground
storage tanks could be built. We had a very elaborate sewer system. We
had to. You would be surprised how fast the shit (sorry, but that is what
it is called) piles up if you don't have a way of taking it away from the
people who make it everyday. We did that and we did not even charge them
for the service of removing it for them. As father explained, we wanted
that waste water and organic matter. We heated it to kill all the germs
and bacteria. We didn't try to kill the bacteria with chemicals or other
things; we just heated it and then distilled out the water. We used the
distilled water for crops and for flushing purposes. We kept the clean
water for drinking and human and animal consumption. Yes, we gave our
animals clean water. The reclaimed waste water was clean, clear and
sanitized, but we took no chances that a pathogen might get into the clean
water system. We didn't need to kill half the people in the Moon to find
out some idiot made a mistake or failed to do his job properly. Mistakes
happen and we could not take chances. A mistake could kill everybody
before we found it. We were just not that big of a colony to take chances.
Father was proud of our tunnel farm. Actually, it was composed of
about ten to fifteen mostly major tunnels and about a dozen minor or branch
tunnels. We even had a few tunnels to the surface. We actually live about
100 meters below the surface. In some areas the tunnels are closer to the
surface and in some areas they are deeper. We have several access tunnels
to the surface and each tunnel and major connections have airlocks. By
putting the tunnels so deep under the surface, the loss of air is kept to a
minimum. This is the air loss to the volatile gases seeping through the
rock. Sure, the tunnel surfaces are sealed against air loss, but nothing
is perfect. Seals and sealing agents dry out in the vacuum of the Moon.
All tunnels uniformly have a flat surface which is a false bottom. All the
electrical, plumbing, and sewage runs in that space. That space is the
difference between a round tunnel and the flat floor or bottom that they
add. It is neat too. We have lots of rock here and we make it into a
glass and turn out rock glass that is not clear, but has a rough surface
for traction and is not as brittle as glass. It makes a great building
material. We can make it hollow and it has good insulating properties.
Rather convenient, but it is not a brilliant stroke of engineering. Just
simple common sense I think. Father always said that common sense was a
misnomer. It usually wasn't very common and to most people it never made
sense except to the people who were citing it as authority. However, to
the enlightened man, it was simple common sense.
Back to my story. Two lunars ago, mother and father went down to
Earth. Father was being given a very prestigious award and an honorary
degree from his old alma mater. The honorary degree was for his
humanitarian work in making the Moon farming a success. Making worms grow
and speeding up the life cycle of soil is some big deal I suppose. Father
and I pioneered the procedure where the tunnel farms were able to bread
`paydirt' at extraordinary speeds. To tell you the truth, what father
designed was the long trough like what they raised most crops on that were
raised above the ground in a different configuration. Most of the troughs
had a central line to drain away the excess water and collect it. Father
designed the tough to be split and slanted to one side so that the alive
soil drained across and down on to the sterile soil. Then the irrigation
water was collected and reused. He could measure the pH and test for
minerals. That way he could actually over water the active soil and it
drained quickly so the worms did not drown or come out of the ground. It
sped up the process by decreasing the time for cross contamination by about
one half. There were other secrets of the trade, but I would ever tell
you. I know them in my head. Anyway, somebody needed to run the farm in
their absence and they would be gone not more than one lunar or two lunars.
They were going to take a vacation and visit grandmother. They would have
taken me with them, but someone needed to tend the family farm. Plus, we
raised crops in addition to worms and soil. That was part of the secret,
make money doing what you do best and make money on the side growing shit
to eat and not just processing the shit, or is it crap to be consistent. I
know that father always called it manure or feces, but that even sounds
nastier. I did a bit of research on the subject. There is no difference
between feces (always plural) and manure, dung, dropping, scat, and any of
the other terms. Some animal species have names specific to their
droppings. I would have raised a stink about handling the shit, but I was
counting all the money I would have when my parents returned. I would be
well off for the next several lunars for anything I wanted. I could return
to Earth to attend college and be well off for two standard years.
The trip was wonderful; they sent messages and told me about it all.
I was impressed. This would have been nice, but there was political unrest
on Earth again. Another third world country or some underdeveloped country
was complaining about how it was their religious destiny to convert the
entire world to their faith or some such nonsense. Well, they did not
consider it nonsense. Whoever was in charge of making sure their threats
were idle threats was asleep on the job. Mother and father had been on
Earth for three weeks and were due to return in about two weeks. I
received a message that they were trying to move up their departure date
without success. I didn't know why, but I soon found out. There is no
noise in space and not much goes on in the Moon to hear anyway. However,
when the news broke, everyone knew of it within an hour. If you were
asleep, then they woke you up to tell you about it. We didn't know at
first what happened, but the beanstalk collapsed. We could see the
reaction on the Earth. Later reports were monitored from the Earth, we can
do that easily because we live on the side of the Moon that always faces
the Earth. Convenient. We may be underground, but we have lots of
electronic windows to the Earth operating at all times. They eventually
found that it was an extreme religious organization that took credit for
setting off a small tactical nuclear device that broke the beanstalk and
brought it down. The compartments that travel up and down the beanstalk
can withstand the force of a blast. It had to be nuclear if it was
detonated outside of the Earth's atmosphere. Most explosives are rather
tricky and sensitive to air pressure and such. The beanstalk should have
been able to resist a conventional explosion of small means. Then in
retaliation, the governments of the world detonated nuclear bombs on that
country in which the religious group was based. Fuck that shit about not
being responsible for their religious leaders and their citizens in a
relatively free society. The countries wanted blood and vengeance. It
took the earth's combined technologies and resources of 50 years to produce
the beanstalk. They might have been able to reproduce it in another ten or
twenty years, but the individual manufacture of the tremendous number of
carbon fibers needed to construct a beanstalk was expensive, time consuming
and in this case needless. They got to eliminating their immediate
problem. Within three days, we counted at least 70 different nuclear
explosions on Earth. Most communications had been cut off. No problem
because the EMF pulse from the nuclear explosions effectively wiped out a
lot of the computers, the radios and the radio stations that had not been
physicall destroyed in the explosions. The electronic devices did not have
to be turned on to be fried electronically.
That was all she wrote. It took mankind about 50 years to build the
beanstalk. It might not take than that long to rebuild it back again, but
after 70 or so nuclear explosions around the face of the globe there was
not much left to rebuild it with. If each explosion did not, like the
first ones in the middle of the 20th century, kill lots of people
immediately, then assume that each one killed at least one half a million
to 5 million people with the radiation aftereffects. The early devices
were a lot smaller and killed about 300,000 people within three months from
the explosion and then the radiation. In larger cities, as many as 5
million people might die directly from the blast and radiation. Forget if
you wipe out only 350 million people or less. You drop bombs to wipe out
the industrial capacity of a nation to wage war and to recover quickly.
You also wipe out its technology, its infrastructure that runs the
government, grows the food, processes the food, the health care system, the
machines and people that generate the electricity and produce or service
everything that makes us civilized. This includes the institutions of
higher learning, the libraries, the books and the computers of intelligence
that enable us to run our civilizations. I was too numb to cry. Maybe I
should have cried. It would not do any good, but I think back now that
crying is a recognition of that first step to utter frustration that you
have to pass through before you can begin to recover emotionally. What
people were left on the Earth, would be getting cold by now, rather hungry,
not have anything to do except try to stay alive and probably not have a
good chance at that. So I knew why mother and father were trying to get
back to the Moon early. Be it ever so humble, there is no place like home,
and the Moon is now my home for probably the rest of my life. I am alive.
We grow our own food, have enough water and do not have any nuclear
weapons. Thank god for that, even if I am not sure I believe in God. We
have idiots of our own, but none to match the ones that used to live on the
Earth. If they are not dead now, they will be in the near future. If not,
then I personally would do the job if I got near them. Why governments
tolerated them in the name of freedom is beyond me. These were the very
people that would not tolerate us in the name of their religion. I worried
about mother and father, and then put them out of my mind. I would
probably never know what happened to them in my lifetime. I thought about
it and hoped that they either died quickly and did not feel any pain, or
that they survived on grandmother's farm while visiting her. She lived in
Kansas. Like every good person who lived in tornado alley, she had a good
strong storm cellar and always put up lots of food each year for the
winter. When I was little that is what I thought grandmothers did for a
living. They canned and bottled and put everything in jars. I was afraid
to let my clean underwear get around her for fear of finding it packaged up
and stored somewhere. It's funny how little kids think. I remember that
her cellar was filled with preserves, food and lots of stuff. She had wind
power for the machinery in the barn as she was too far out for the power
lines to be counted on for most of the stuff. What power she had usually
went out in every storm so she had to have back up power. Also, fossil
fuels were getting harder to get and were expensive. The tax on the CO2
generated was getting to be very expensive. They still used it for
airplanes and some other things where there just wasn't a good substitute.
Long ago father had made sure she hod lots of options that she could keep
on going for virtually forever without bought power. It was less
convenient, but it worked. My only hope was that mother and father made it
to grandmother's place. I might see them in forty or fifty years if they
were still alive. First, they had to rebuild the beanstalk or it would
cost millions of credits to get a person off the planet, not just the
thousands of credits for a ticket up the beanstalk.
So I got over feeling sorry for them because the worry would just kill
me. Either they made it or they didn't. I would find out perhaps before
my death. I would have cried for weeks, but I had more immediate problems.
You see I instantly recognized what our problem was. Even if life on Earth
was not over, it was set back by hundreds of years if not thousands of
years. The Moon was effectively cut off from the Earth. We might be able
to get some people back to the earth, but who would want to go. No one,
really considering what the Earth must be like now. We had civilization
here, we had food and power and we could keep on going. There had been a
big push to get people to the Moon. Father's work was instrumental in
implementing that policy realistically. Get the people to the Moon as be
had the technology to produce the fertile soil to raise the food to feed
the people. There were perhaps about 10,000 people living here. There
were some exploratory settlements on Mars, but that only accounted for
perhaps 50 to 100 people total. They probably would be coming back to the
Moon. Mars was not self sufficient. The Moon wasn't technically, but we
could be. What am I talking about, we are as of now. I got mad. How in
the hell could the leaders of the world let this happen to us? Then I
thought about it, it happened to them too and they were in a lot worse
position than I was. Their world was in riots probably and laid to waste
by nuclear fallout and bombs. Food would be scarce and the population of
the world would probably drop to a few million within a couple of years.
Perhaps even lower. The fifty million or even a billion people killed by
the bombs and radiation was nothing. Starvation and disease and then
ultimately death would be the end result for most of the people still alive
on the Earth. I can forgive them their arrogance because now they were
paying the price for it. I was mad because I also was paying the price of
their arrogance. I could live as I had the family farm and could sell
worms and make a living rather nicely. We had solar power for electricity
and most modern conveniences for the Moon. We had lots of computers,
libraries, and the entire storehouse of man's knowledge kept independently
right here on the Moon. We would do nicely. We had enough water as we
recycled most of our water. We had plenty to spare and resources no too
far out in space for all the water we would need in the foreseeable future.
We could produce enough food to feed us all and we had families that were
going to grow on the Moon. I would be fine, except.
The except was a big except to me. I had planned to return to earth
to go to college even though we had a big college age group here. Not a
big college, but when a Moon is filled with scientists, there is everything
on the computer network and the faculty for what could staff five colleges.
Almost everyone here had at least one college degree, many had a Ph.D or
several degrees. I did not need to go to Earth to learn, but I wanted to
return to Earth. I wanted an Earth college experience. I had this deep
dark secret. I need to return to Earth to find happiness. I knew that to
be happy in life I had to find my soul mate. Sure, they had lots of young
girls that were eligible and would happily have set up shop with me and
been happy to become my wife and bear my children. I wanted children too.
I wanted to be married and to have a good home life. I saw with my own
parents how happy they were together and I wanted the same for me. I
wanted that special someone to love. Well, you ask, what is my problem. I
can put this delicately and beat around the bush for the next fifteen
lunars, but that will not make it any easier to explain. It will not make
it any more understandable. It will not make it any easier to say or
write. I wanted to settle down with another guy. There, I said it. I am
that dreaded homo guy your parents warned you about. I know, they warned
me about me too, only they didn't know I was me. You know what I mean.
Oh, and I do not have blond hair and blue eyes. My hair is dark brown and
my eyes are light brown. In the light, they seem to sparkle, but they are
definitely brown and not even close to being blue or beautiful. My hair
used to be curly when I was younger, but now it is mostly straight, but it
curls enough to be a nuisance. I wanted either curly hair or straight
hair. Instead, I got horrible hair. Just curly enough not to be able to
do anything with it -- it was not straight enough to be cool looking.
I got over not having blond hair and blue eyes. I accept the fact
that I look nice, but ordinary. I am exactly 6 feet tall and I weigh on
the Earth about 160 pounds. Yea, I am a little thin. Not too bad, but
here on the Moon, it is convenient. I have actually lost a little weight
here. I am rather proud of that male appendage, but we need not go into
that at this time. Sufficient to say all that if it is nice and fully
functioning. I just have not had anyone to function it with for the last
two years. That is why I never wanted to leave the Earth. My parents
never knew this, but I had a boy friend, a bf, who was so cool and good
looking. I was so in love with him and we never wanted to be apart. The
Moon killed that. According to statistics with 10,000 people on the Moon,
about 1,000 people should be gay. It is heavily weighted in favor of males
as opposed to females as gay females would not normally emigrate to the
Moon. However, and this was a big however. Most scientists on the moon
were family men who brought their families with them. The full time
workers had families and so I figure that of the 10,000 people here, most
were adults and most were straight. Perhaps there were maybe about 150 gay
males between the ages of 15 and 45 at best. More likely around one or two
from what I could see. I was one and the question was could I find the
other one before I had to get married to a woman to get a bj. I would
settle for that. I could use my imagination. However, I just didn't think
that I could bring myself to actually having sex with a woman. There is no
sort of imagination that can imagine away breasts and imagine the other
parts that I wanted and needed. Oral sex is different. You can close your
eyes and imagine. What am I talking about? I had a bf and we never did
anything but oral sex anyway. We felt we were not ready for that yet and
we were saving ourselves for marriage. I was ready to marry him then. I
didn't care that we were too young. I was ready.
At that time, two men could get married in 22 countries and in 28
states of the United States. We had talked about running away when we
turned 18 to get married. I know it was just idle talk, but we were in
love and even our parents did not know it. But we knew it. Then the Moon
happened. We cried and we still send messages two or three times a week.
I know all about what is going on in his life and vice versa. He wanted to
get a research job here on the Moon if I could not get back for school. We
wanted to be together. Whatever happened, school or no school, we wanted
to be together.
Well, there was no open communication with the earth now. The
government, what there was of it here, would tell us when any communication
was opened up. We had a Moon wide communications system and on our
computers we got news items and were kept up to date on everything that was
happening. However, relays to and from Earth of private messages and all
communications was over for the foreseeable future. It was not a
censorship issue, it was that we had no reasonable expectation that earth
had any facilities to receive private messages and even less hope of them
being delivered. I was now living in one of the most comfortable positions
for anyone that was on Earth as I would have power, food and all my normal
services. Anyone on Earth would probably not have that. I was, however,
on a quest to find love and companionship. I imagined I might have to go
to just about every man or all the inhabitants on the Moon and asking if
they liked to....... my mind wandered. I might make it through about the
first hundred or so before I get my lights punched out or raped. Neither
of which appealed to me. Now, what the Hell do I do. I am in a most
enviable position, and yet I was in my own living hell. The only thing I
had to look forward to tomorrow was being in a better position that anyone
on Earth and yet I was alone in my own living Hell. Most young men would
have found a cute, attractive young girl who was willing to have sex with
him every day and make babies with him and settled down to sexual heaven.
For me it would have been a sexual nightmare and sexual Hell. Forced to
have sex with someone you really didn't want to have sex with just so you
didn't have to beat your head against the tunnel walls to kill your sex
drive which had recently gone into overdrive knowing that with 6 to 8
lunars, you would be back on the Earth with about five to ten million
willing young men to pick and choose from if my bf was not willing. I had
a sure thing and about ten million alternates. I was ready for anything
and everything, BUT THIS. Fuck the government and religion. You just
fucked up my life for the next fifty to seventy years. I hate you and I
hate your God. Not my God, but your God, I hate him for what youclaim he
tells you to do. The one that tells you to go out there and to hate, kill,
and destroy in his name. If I ever get my hands on you, you will regret
it, and your little dog too. Sorry, that last remark is a hold over from
my wicked witch of the West persona. Somebody had dropped a house on my
party. I silently cried myself to sleep again.
CHAPTER 2
Well, three lunars have come and gone and there have been about a dozen
pretty young girls that have been sent by their fathers or families to
purchase worms from me. Usually the families just send in the orders and
arrange to pick them up when I notify them that the order has been
processed and the day and time they can pick up the worms or the `paydirt.'
However, lately, more young girls have been showing up to personally pick
up the orders. I did not think anything of it at first, but each one
became more seductive toward me. They tell me that it must be lonely
without my parents and stuff like that. I know I am dense. However, you
only have to hit me over the head about five or six times before I finally
realize that I am being hit on. I love the attention, but I wondered if
they could have sent their brothers over to pick up the worms instead. I
would have been much more receptive and interested. In fact, I had one
special worm for them if they wanted it. I had to get my mind out of the
compost heap. I was about to put my worm in the compost heap to see if it
felt good. I was getting desperate.
There was no word from Earth for the first two lunars, but the
administration (our government) said that some military signals were now
getting out and it spoke of the wide spread civil confusion and wholesale
destruction. They limited broadcasts to one hour a day and people were
regrouping to unify the governments of Earth. The major cities had all
been hit, but the lesser cities had survived. Gone was London, New York,
LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, Paris, Mexico City, Rio, San Paulo, Madrid,
Moscow, Hong Kong, New Delhi, and about a dozen or two dozen other major
cities. Mostly in the East. Most of the Arab countries had been hit hard
too. Cairo, Greece, Rome and other places if not hit directly had major
damage. The consensus of the world as we were hearing it through these
limited broadcasts was that instead of a world of peace their governments
had given them a world in pieces. Two lunars later there were news
broadcasts of a new world government and its first act was to outlaw war
and terrorism. Nice try if you can get it to work, I thought. It still
didn't solve my problem. If I let my status by known, I liked to call it
that rather than my sexual orientation, I would be just so much dead meat
as the people on Earth whose bodies were rotting away because of radiation
poisoning. Actually, by now they were probably dead and another twenty
percent would die over the next twenty years from additional cancers or
diseases from the effects of the bomb blasts. Most of them would not die
of cancer because they would die of disease starvation and other problems
directly attributable to the collapse of civilization as we know it.
Me, I was part of the living dead. Dead, because I had no one to
share by life with and probably would not have someone for twenty years, if
ever. I realized that in twenty years there was not magically going to
appear another gay person on the Moon. If he was already here, then I
needed to get my butt in gear and find that son of a bitch fast before
somebody else does and beats me to him. I just hoped that he would be cute
and willing to at least try and propagate our species. All right, I was
only kidding. I know that no two or any number of gay men ever gave birth
to another human being. But I was willing to try. I suppose that the fun
is in trying. I was game. The problem was how to go about it. Certainly,
there must be another gay person on the Moon about my age. I hoped to meet
him. I put in the back of my mind how to get him away from his bf if he
had one. Then I questioned if polygamy would be acceptable to me if it was
my only choice. Well, I would cross that bridge when I come to it. Right
now my only question was if I was a lefty or a righty. Was I right handed
or left handed. Perhaps it would seem like a new date if I switched hands.
All right, I am feeling sorry for myself; I admit it. You would too if you
had this problem. The only thing I can say about my problem is that it is
big, hard and requires constant care and attention to keep him from
controlling my life most of the time.
I regrouped. Father had lists of all the farmers on the Moon. Most
of the major tunnels connected to each other and we could send out computer
messages to all the farms and farmers. I told everyone that I was taking
over my father's business as he had been stranded on Earth. Everyone knew
what that meant. He was dead, alive or whatever, but he wasn't here and
they needed to know that they could still get their worms on schedule. I
advised everyone that we could no longer make deliveries as I was
shorthanded, but that they could send by members of their family to pick up
the worms when needed. Please order in advance except on emergency basis.
Since the packages could require a strong person to carry them, I suggested
that for most orders it would be better to send a male or several males to
pick up large orders. I still used the organic matter from our own farm as
fertilizer and had arranged to permanently use the manure from several of
the farm fields around us too. I made sure that our business arrangements
would continue with these farmers at the same price. All pollination had
to be done by hand. Bees just didn't thrive in our thin atmosphere and
lower gravity. They were working on it, but bees are engineered for Earth
and do not adapt well to the Moon. Any farm hand was an old hand at
fucking with plants, sorry, pollinating plants. Remember, a flower is the
sexual organ of a plant. I am sorry that my mind is in the gutter, but I
wished my body was there with someone special instead of just my mind being
there. I had to send enough soil with the worms to make sure that they
survived the trip and had something to eat once they got there. I didn't
give guarantees, but I did refer them to our computer site with the care
and feeding of worms. We actually figured in the charge for the good
topsoil into the price of the worms. We had to or we would be giving away
our topsoil and we sold that too. The soil was worth as much or more than
the worms. The soil was good rich `paydirt' and had all the good and right
bacteria. If not, the worms could not survive. We cautioned each
purchaser that the worms can not live in sterile soil and have to have lots
of organic matter. They also have to have the right pH balance. Too much
either way and the worms would die a quick death. We certainly could not
afford to give away the `paydirt' that we sold with the worms. Then your
worms might cost you five or ten credits per worm.
I don't know why I am telling you this. If you have ever purchased
worms, you know the price and the value of worms and the soil they come in.
It came to about a credit per worm. The soil was about twenty credits per
kilo. A small order would usually run 50 to 100 credits or more. That was
a nice tidy sum of money for an individual sale. Farmers learned to take
care of their worms or they went broke or starved to death. I let it be
known that I needed a young man to assist me in raising worms as I no
longer had the rest of my family to assist me. I told them the job
required that the person live on the premises so it would be better for a
single man between the ages of 15 standard earth years old and not more
than perhaps 25. I was afraid to put in that he should be cute,
intelligent, not have a girlfriend, and of course like to have sex with and
to fuck like a mink, rabbit or any of various very prolifit animals. Well,
let us just say I omitted that part. The job came with room and board and
some payment for services. The person would be free to visit with his
family, but he would be expected to live here to assist 24 hours a day.
That last part was just an expression as we kept days according to Earth.
Our day and night cycle was about 28 days. From Sun up to Sun up again or
Sun down to Sun down was about 28 days. Most of the money raised in the
sale of worms and `paydirt' went into the production of more worms and
`paydirt.' You would be surprised how much manure costs. Plus, shoveling
it into wheelbarrows and bringing it back to the tunnel farm is time
consuming and labor intensive. Do you have any idea how expensive a
wheelbarrow is. Forget that they now make them out of something like Moon
glass. No metal that rusts or rots. No plastics that have to be imported
from earth. We make our own. However, the wheels are expensive and so are
the ball bearing parts for the wheels. Plastic moving parts just do not
hold up. Father and I found that out the hard way.
So I needed someone to help me move lots of shit (sorry, but it was
shit factually and actually) from the neighboring farms back to ours. We
had to sterilize the shit and then incorporate it into our own rich active
soil. Father and I developed a vacuum sterilization that worked nicely.
Father taught me to weld and how to design and build things. It was a
precautionary measure to sterilize everything, but it was mandated by the
administration. If we ever got a germ out there that was lethal, we would
all be dead before we knew what hit us. We used steam to disinfect the
equipment. We recaptured the steam and vacuum distilled it. All this
technology required lots of electricity and lots of man hours. It was hot
and messy work too. I might get to see a half naked guy a lot too. That
was some perks of the job that I liked, really. I had hoped that perhaps
we could have some fun together too. The only thing more fun than a half
naked sweaty guy is a fully naked sweaty guy. I kept that part of the job
to myself. If father and mother had not been working the farm and had all
this set up, then I would be in a world of hurt. However, the Moon would
be hurting even more.
I forgot to tell you that father actually worked for the military
services as a civilian contractor. Within two days of B day I had a
personal visit from General Gibbs. I had know him as a nice man and a
friend of my father and mother. He asked me how things were going and if I
needed help. You see father was the only commercial producer of `paydirt'
and worms on the Moon. You didn't need more than one. Once you made
`paydirt' it made more all by itself unless you just didn't know what you
were doing. Father kept up a reliable supply and made enough for the new
tunnel farms being made every day and for the supply needed to keep
existing farms well supplied. The General wanted to know if I was going to
keep making a reliable supply of `paydirt' and worms now that my parents
were probably not coming back until this little Earth emergency is over. I
think that was how he phrased it. I assured him I was as I did not suppose
I would be returning to Earth to attend college in the near future as we
had planned for me. At least I could not go until my parents returned to
take over their farm. He told me he hoped that he could place as much
faith and trust in me as my parents did. He thought he could and almost
begged me not to let him down. He then asked me if I was going to raise my
prices. I told him I was going to keep the prices the same as long as I
could. The thing that would make a difference is if the cost of my
supplies went up and the fact that I was going to have to hire someone to
assist me. He told me to keep my prices as stable as I could and before I
did anything to let him know first. He said he had a lot of manpower he
could lend me whenever I needed it. I asked him about the manure from the
military area and what they did with it. He said that they sterilized it
and then sold it. I told him if I ever ran short, then I would call him.
He reassured me that one thing the military always had was a ready supply
of shit. His words, not mine. He laughed at that too. He was like that.
He was a nice man, but I never wanted to cross him. You knew he would not
hesitate to place his job and the welfare of the Moon ahead of any one
individual or group of individuals. He had a job to do and he would do it.
I respected him for that. He was a good man to have on the side of the
Moon.
I was not worried. I had known him since my parents came to the Moon
and I always found him to be a fair man and a nice man to me. Father said
he was strict, but fair; more important, he was an honest man. We talked
about things in general and he said that anytime I needed anything that I
could not find, just to let him know. I thanked him and then he left.
I ran the notice and got about a dozen young men who were interested
in the position. I personally talked to each of them on the phone. I
settled on three with qualifications that I liked and I personally liked
each of the young men. I had to find out who might be interested in some
fringe benefits in addition to a career in shit and worms. Now I have to
tell you this too. You may be reading this a few hundred years from now
when mankind finally reaches the Moon again. Hopefully, we are all alive
or at least our descendants are alive. If so, then we will have served our
purpose and carried on our lives and genetic material for mankind. Also
our cumulative knowledge may help mankind to learn from our mistakes and
our knowledge of what to do to survive on the Moon and the other satellites
and worlds we settle on in the future. After all, the Moon is not a
natural habitat for man. Our survival is a tribute to the knowledge and
collective willpower of mankind. The Moon has several athletic complexes
for the entire ten thousand inhabitants. It has to or we could not
survive. Our bones won't stay solid and our muscles would waste away if we
did not exercise constantly.
While most people have to go three times a week, I usually only get
there once a week. However, my work is actually quite strenuous physically
so when I go once a week, it is usually sufficient. When I do go, I spend
my time in the giant centrifuge and do exercises under one standard
gravity. The big centrifuge is large and can hold about a hundred people
at one time. We spend about one hour a week in there and run in place and
jog and even do exercises every week. They log in your attendance and if
you miss two weeks in a row, they send someone to get you and escort you to
the centrifuge. The machine is huge and they schedule people in shifts.
The machine is always in use. People are lined up to get on it and they
change shifts in about three minutes. There is no fooling around with this
process. The shifts change every hour on the hour. The machine is down
for four hours a day for preventative maintenance. That means that for 20
hours a day there are 100 people on the machine and the machine can service
2,000 people a day. That is 14,000 people a week. They have some openings
and can cut you some slack. But you show up at your assigned time or
General Gibbs knows about it. Maybe not the first time you reschedule, but
his staff knows about it. Miss too many times and the General will
personally escort you. Then in the future, you will find that your time
has been changed to the same time the General works out and he will notice
every time you are late or miss your appointment. The General has been
known to threaten the use of force or great bodily harm and to personally
execute the sentence. At least, I have heard rumors. I mentioned this to
father and he asked me what I would do in the General's place. I confessed
that I didn't know. Father told me then to keep my opinions to myself
until I came up with a better system. He smiled at me when he told me this
and then grinned. He said the General was a fair man, but he had a job to
do. One of those jobs was to protect us against ourselves. I saw his
point. In the future I did my figuring to my self quietly and talked it
our in my mind before I opened my mouth and made an adolescent fool out of
myself. If somebody did not exercise, then ship him back to the Earth.
The Moon didn't need him that bad. Besides, his health would quickly go
down and then his productivity would be worthless to him and everyone.
Back to the interview process. I was going to enjoy this. There were
three really good applicants. I set up to talk to each one on a different
day. I could only afford to take off an hour or two each day for the
interview. The first one wanted to work so that he could get enough money
to marry his sweetheart. She lived with her family about two tunnels over
from his family's tunnel. He was nice enough, but not the brightest guy
around and he would probably leave once he had enough money and stuff to
marry his current girlfriend. He might leave before that if she put
pressure on him. He was stunning to look at, but he wanted to be married
in the worse way. I probably could not hold him at a farm that raises shit
and worms too long. I would only settle for him if he was a last resort.
The next day, Tim came to see me. He was a nice enough guy, he had a
girlfriend and he was 25 years old. He had only been on the Moon with his
family for about six lunars. They had come up just lunars before B day.
That is the day they dropped the bombs on each other on Earth. His
girlfriend had come up with his family and they were going to get married
once she decided if she was going to stay on the Moon. Well, she was
staying because it was a long walk back to Earth and the trip down to the
surface was rather hot if you just decided to just drop in on the Earth.
The last guy was Danny. He had been on the Moon for about one year.
His father and mother were research scientists who also had a family farm.
Just about everyone had a family farm. He had three younger brothers and
two younger sisters. Well, we know what his mother and father did in their
spare time. They made carpenters. His last name was Carpenter. Danny was
a year older than I was and he was scheduled to return to the Earth to
attend college in the next couple of lunars. I questioned him about that.
Why not attend college here on the Moon? He told me that he liked it here,
but that the Moon had nothing to offer him in the way of friends or a
social life. I asked him if he had a girlfriend. He said no. I asked him
why not, and he replied that he just was not interested in girls at this
time. He then questioned if it was necessary to have a girlfriend to get
the position. I looked at him kind of funny. I told him no, but that I
needed to know if he was planning to get married and then move out and not
be available for work. Danny was tall, about 6 foot tall or just a little
taller and had very dirty blond hair and green eyes. He was cute and had a
very fair complexion. He also worked out in the gym more than the basic
minimum as he had some nice muscles. I don't know, but he looked real good
from where I was sitting.
I told him I would give him a probationary period of one lunar to see
if he liked working for and with me and to see if he liked the work. I
would also be judging if I liked working with him. He smiled and asked how
good did I want to get to know him. I thought perhaps I was reading too
much into the remark. It didn't matter as I had run out of what I thought
were good candidates and I had a load of shit to pick up and process. We
made arrangements for him to bring the stuff he needed or wanted with him
tomorrow. I would get him a room set up for his use. We had lots of spare
tunnels, but all I did was move my parents things into containers and
stored them in a tunnel and then I moved my things into their side tunnel.
I would give him my tunnel to use. My tunnel was next to his now. I
wouldn't need it as I was going to use my parents and my parents would not
be back for probably years if ever. I packed up their things except the
personal items that I wanted to keep out to remind me of them. This was
the hardest thing I had done since they left for Earth. I guess it
symbolized that they were not returning any time soon. I had been able to
keep up my fantasy that they might return soon. However, that was over
when I packed up their things. Danny came and saw me packing and crying at
the same time. I was not sobbing or even overtly crying, I just had tears
that were running involuntarily down my face at different intervals. He
left me alone and told me he would be in the other tunnel if I needed him.
He gave me my space, and I was thankful for that. Later he came in to see
how I was doing. I had already moved my stuff out of my tunnel that
morning before he arrived. I had left some of the things he might have
some use for that I didn't need or my parents had also. I couldn't bring
myself to give him their things to use and keep mine. He would help me to
carry the containers to the tunnel we were going to use for personal
storage. I put a vacuum on the containers so the contents would keep for
centuries probably. I pumped in some nitrogen gas so that the containers
would not be a total vacuum. The containers were more likely to keep the
seal if they did not have to keep out even a half an atmosphere of
pressure. This was just to keep the gas inside of the container and to
keep the atmosphere out of the container. The containers just kept the
movement from inside the container to outside at a standstill not against
any atmospheric pressure. We don't realize it, but oxygen is very
corrosive nitrogen is not. Even just 20 percent oxygen is extremely
corrosive or reactive. Even if the things did not keep for centuries, they
would be fine for decades. It was more than enough time for me to decide
what to do with them.
I had unpacked all my things and packed all the things I wanted to put
in storage in the containers. The containers were ready to put in storage.
I called Danny and he helped me. I was so embarrassed. In the middle of
the process, I broke down and started to cry again. This time it was a
full blown event. I couldn't hide it from Danny or anyone who might be
there. Danny came over and held me. He had his arms around me and it
helped. He looked at me and spoke.
"These were your parents things? I understand that your parents had
returned to earth just before B day." It was a statement, not a question.
"Yea."
"You had no brothers or sisters?"
"No. None here. They are all older than I am and married and have
farms on Earth and are raising their families."
"You have no close friends here on the Moon?" I looked up at Danny.
"Not really. No one that I am close to."
"No girl friend?" He was being kind, but I didn't see where this was
going although I should have known.
"No."
"Did you have one on Earth and do you miss her."
"No. I didn't. I had a bf, but he stayed behind with his parents."
Now I had slipped up and maybe he would only think that I had a close
friend on Earth that was another guy like me. You know, a best buddy or
mate.
"You mean a real bf, like instead of a girl friend." He looked me
straight in my eyes and held his hand under my chin. He looked into my
eyes.
"Yes. A real bf like a girl friend, only a boy." I looked up at him
and started to cry some more. "If you want to move back to your family, I
will understand. I can find someone else to work here with me if that
bothers you." I knew I had blown it with Danny. I could see him thinking
and I was afraid he would tell everyone and even General Gibbs. I might be
the first casualty of war on the Moon. I wonder if they still stone people
on the Moon for being gay. I could see Danny looking at me. I lowered my
head. Danny pushed his hand further under my chin and lifted it and forced
my head back. I was afraid he might hurt me, but so far it was not painful
or even uncomfortable. He was actually quite gentle. I didn't want to
look at him. He leaned over a little and brought his lips to mine. We
kissed and I was in heaven. For perhaps minutes, I do not know exactly how
long we embraced. When our lips parted, he spoke.
"I wanted to return to Earth to go to college because I thought I was
the only other gay person on the Moon. Now, I am glad that I stayed. I
don't have to worry about anybody trying to steal my bf now. Do I?" I
looked up at his eyes and kissed him again.
"Not at all." I told him that my old bed was not really comfortable
and he could bunk in with me in the mean time if he wanted to. I told him
we could make him a new bed if he wanted one. He agreed and I went over to
my computer to check the time. It was now late in the afternoon and
tomorrow would be the start of the new Moon. I thought about that. Yea,
tomorrow would mark the start of a new Moon. I thought about that too. A
new moon and a good Moon I thought. Perhaps you should always start a
romance at a new Moon like my grandmother said about planting your seeds at
the new Moon. Life in the Moon was going to be worth living after all. I
started to cry again. Only this time they were tears of joy.
POST A STORY-MOON STORY.lwp
REV 11/4/2009
Copyright AINSLEY