Chapter Text
The stars don’t twinkle on the moon, that would require an atmosphere, though the lack thereof makes it ideal for observing the cosmos, but not so much for basic human survival. It does offer a great view of the Earth, illuminated by the far off sun glowing blue and green, suspended in inky blackness. Burning high above, the sun, the biggest star in the lunar sky was blinding to say the least, and the source of literally all life to say the most.
The lunar surface however, was barren as always, and white with reflected daylight, as far as the eyes could see. An unchanging sandy, gravely, colorless hellscape. Nothing new, nothing different.
"Reg," the voice coms buzzed. "You staring off into space again?" The voice chuckled. "Can I get that spanner from you?"
Reg took one last look at the half illuminated blue green marble before him, and turned around.
"Sure dad, here." He replied, grabbing the corner of something on his arm, gently ripping the velcro, revealing an assortment of tools held along the inside of the wraps.
He pulled out the tool his dad asked for and handed it over. His dad in a very trained motion took the spanner, flipped it around, and tightened a bolt, tapping on it with a bit of flourish.
"OK Rosie, try now" His dad's voice rang out. For whatever reason, he projected his voice whenever trying to talk to someone in another room, even if the other person was on the other end of a line, physically separated by the vacuum of space.
"No drop in pressure, doctor mechanic!" A female voice playfully piped up over the coms.
"Excellent! That means we're done!" Reg's dad turned to face him, even behind the highly polarized helmet, he could tell his dad was smiling. "Let's head back inside champ." He said, handing the spanner back to Reg.
Those were the words he was waiting for. Finally. Reg put the tool back, wrapping his bracers around his arms once more, and heading for the airlock. Inside, the two of them waited for everything to repressurize, and the liquid nitrogen to blow off the fine regolith off their suits. They doffed their EMU spacesuits, and swept the loose dust into a small opening at the base of the airlock wall, kicked a switch, and watched as it all got vacuumed up.
"You dust free Reg?" His dad patted his shoulder.
"Mhm, yeah." Reg replied, hitting the vacuum's switch with his foot, turning it off. He looked over at his dad’s face, his short black hair and ice blue eyes, and his dad smiled back at him.
"Ok, I have some work I need to take care of, meet up with your mother and finish your daily assignments, we'll meet up at 19 for dinner, alright?" He tussled Reg's hair once, patted him and opened the door to the base.
Reg absent-mindedly nodded and eagerly stepped back into the base, his home and the only home he has ever known. It opened to a large living room, converted from an old conference room where scientists would debrief and record their findings after coming back from their lunar excursions. Now it featured plain green couches, a glass table, and a wide screen entertainment center, all teleported from Earth.
He shuffled past the living room, into the dining area with its tall metal chairs and glass table, past the kitchen with its intimidating mechanical wall full of auto cooking features, through the hall of various doors that would never be opened again, and into the back where finally the greenhouse lay. He opened the door to a huge atrium with a large glass ceiling that filtered out the harsh sun, tinting the shadows with a slight blue. Walls and walls of hydroponic plants filled the space making the air fresh and moist.
Reg walked perpendicular to the rows of plant walls until he finally spotted his mom, hair up in a tight bun, at the end, inspecting some sprouts in growers on a table along the far wall.
"Ah, hi Reg," She said without turning around, "How was your moonwalk?"
"Fine." Reg replied.
"Boring?"
"Yeah."
"Boring is good." She turned around with a smile, "Wouldn't want an exciting moonwalk! That'd probably mean something went wrong!" She giggled.
Reg offered a smile, but he didn't have much of one to give. His mom pleasantly smiled at him.
"Well, the sprouts are coming in nicely! Take a look, these are rare succulents from the Zona desert of Netopia!" She motioned for Reg to come closer.
As he did, she pointed at their little plump leaves.
"It takes them 5 months to sprout normally," She explained. "But in this specialized environment they sprout in 4! Isn't that exciting! We could save this species a lot faster if we sprout them here!"
"Uh sure." Reg replied, not sure what to add. The leaves had a curious texture to them and a calming green. It reminded him of the couch in the living room, but brighter. He smiled a little.
There was a long pause until his mom finally asked in a chipper voice, "Well, what would you like for dinner? Your choice! Anything you want!"
"Huh?" Reg jumped back a little. "What, no, I. There's nothing I want, in particular. I'm not hungry for anything…" He lied.
His mom hummed with a smile. "Think of it as a little early birthday treat!" She chuckled. "We'll get those NAXA engies to teleport us up some good grub! Maybe some cajun pasta…" She leaned to her side, keeping a cheerful look at her son.
Reg's mouth watered at the thought of some local Spacity cuisine. "N-no, I'm fine. Wouldn't the Head get upset at you for making mission control do food deliveries so much?"
"Pshhh!" She tossed her hand dismissively. "I'll deal with that stick in the as- mud." She quickly corrected. "It's your birthday tomorrow and everyone down at MC loves to spoil you."
"It's fine, the PACA can make spaghetti too, we've got plenty of dough."
"The PACA can't get that delightful balance of spice just right. Using only liquid ingredients can only get you so far. You'd think that after all this time they'd invent a dust free spice kit! Oh what I wouldn't give for a powdered donut right now."
"Mom, the ventilators are already working way too hard. We had to repair them twice this month."
"Oh I know." She sighed. "Well I'm messaging your dad about what he wants from BeeBee's."
"What?!"
"You're getting spoiled." She pointed at him, "Whether you want to or not." She gave a cat-like grin and pressed a floating screen next to her that Reg just now noticed.
Reg grumbled, but couldn't help but to soften his expression when the memory of spicy seafood floated into mind.
"Oh! A fast reply! Sounds like he's hungry too. Boudin and dirty rice…" his mom said to herself, typing on the screen.
Reg caved. "Can I have… Their sausage plate?"
She smiled wide, "Anything for you birthday boy!" And finished her typing with a quick flick of the wrist, sending it.
"In the meantime!" She continued, not facing him. He knew what she was going to say. "You need to work on your daily assignments. Gotta keep your studies up! You'll be 18 and choosing a college before you know it!"
"Mhmm…" Reg strained to not roll his eyes. He knew this. It's basically all he thought about. Just three more years and maybe, off this dang moon.
"Can I work on them in here?" He asked, already knowing the answer and heading to a open table and chair.
"Yes, thanks for asking. I'm just going to be taking measurements of some of these sprouts. If you need any help, just ask." She said, facing the plants and taking notes on a floating screen.
"Mhm." Reg sat and pulled out a pair of gloves with shallow, shiny bumps on the fingertips. With a practiced motion, he pressed a button on the wrists and put them on, and in a couple of seconds, a screen was projected off of them.
He began navigating through menus until he found his assignments; to read a chapter in his history texts, fill out a math worksheet, and take a chemistry quiz. He knocked out the quiz first, scoring well enough, and moved onto math that didn't take long either.
History wasn't a great subject of his. The whole concept of people making grand decisions affecting large swathes of the population all seemed so distant. He couldn't imagine a room with more than 30 people, let alone the mere millions that occupied any city on Earth. It left him in this odd state of detached curiosity, something drew him to the texts like how one would hear tales around the campfire. Or Mom's story time around the big flashlight.
He pulled up the chapter and began reading. It was a chapter he had skimmed before, detailing the events of early 21XX, a pretty uneventful set of years. He quickly got bored and skipped ahead to a part that always stuck with him.
Deep in the later chapters of early 23XX there was a picture of a framed photo of a digital being set on a black shelf with incense and a device next to the photo. The caption read, 'Many people had funerals for their digital companions'. He had skimmed this chapter more than the others, but without knowledge of what preceded this, he wouldn't understand it, and he knew this.
From what he could tell, a decision was made to update the entirety of the internet to make it more streamlined and less memory intensive, getting rid of both artificial intelligent programs and viruses in the process. He scrolled back to that picture of the funeral.
He lingered on that picture, his brain trying to piece together a logical story. Why did this happen? Who was this Ai in the photograph to the people who took the photo? Was this new internet worth this? This all happened a century ago, how much has changed since?
Even with the answers at his fingertips, he felt he'd never get the full picture.
He mindlessly scrolled till he remembered his assignment, jumping back to the chapter and actually read it. By the time he finished, two hours had passed since he'd sat down. Only one more hour til food.
He went back to skimming through the chapters, zoned out and unfocused. Something light blue flashed to his left, and he turned to see nothing out of the ordinary. When he turned back to the screen in front of him, out of the corner of his eye he saw it again, quickly turning this time, to nothing.
"Something the matter?" His mother called out from down the greenhouse.
"N-no…" Reg slowly looked around. He felt a slight chill ripple through him and shot upright. He searched for an excuse, "Uh, I'm just gonna, go to the bathroom."
"Ok sweetheart, don't fall in!" She chuckled, waving casually.
Reg forced a smile so much it looked painful, and rapidly shuffled out of the room, down the long hall of doors, into the living area, and into his room.
There he picked up an orb shaped device, and entered the bathroom. He closed the door behind him with a sigh.
"If I'm malfunctioning," Reg said to himself, placing the device aside. "Who could possibly repair me?"
He gripped the sides of the sink, he always hated this. He looked up.
His weary face looked back at him through the mirror. Black hair, dark blue eyes, with his left eye surrounded by an indent in the skin. His left eye let off the faintest of cyan light, and if he focused, he could hear the lenses moving gently.
He opened his right arm brace, removing a tool tucked inside, a long, blunt, hooked instrument. He moved the tool closer to his face, closing his eyes shut, bracing himself, then inserted the tool into the indent, rotated it, and flipped open that region of his face.
No wincing could prevent his ability to witness this, as he had just moved his left eyelids off his eye, revealing the hardware underneath. He opened his right eye, no sense in hiding it.
For a moment he stared at it, the metallic casing housing his robotic eye, a sight he had never gotten used to. It all looked fine, no sign of the odd bright flashes, or anything that could cause it on the surface of the lenses, at least from what he could tell.
He picked up the spherical device, clicked it, and pulled a connector from it, plugging it into a port within his face. The diagnostics he ran came back clean, then he sighed, deflated, unplugging himself and shutting the flap back onto his face in a practiced motion. He kept his hand there for a while, looking back at the mirror, slowly moving his hand down and letting his left eye see once more.
He inspected the hooked tool, and stored it away.
"I must be tired." He said aloud. "How could I not be. Another busy day of fixing everything. Just like-" He couldn't finish the sentence. His throat froze and his shoulder shook, tears welled up in his eye, his right eye.
He shook himself free of whatever had come over him, splashing water in his face and drying off on a towel.
"Pull yourself together, birthday boy." He mumbled into the towel as he pulled it down his face. "Three more years. Just three more years."
He took a moment to gather himself, his thoughts, and the device he used for diagnostics. He stepped out of the bathroom, placing the orb back in its charging dock, and looked around his room.
Posters of the ocean and undersea life covered almost every inch of wall and made the room practically glow blue with all the reflected sunlight coming in from the large glass ceiling. The room used to house a lot more people, and Reg remembered the many months of renovations he and family did after the other scientists had to leave. He was grateful to have a room all to himself, but he couldn't help but to linger on the memories of his mom and dad sleeping peacefully in a bunk next to his.
He pushed the thought out of his head and looked at the time, on a little whale shaped clock, a gift from his eighth birthday. It was a good 30 minutes till he had to go eat dinner, the perfect amount of time to lay on the floor and do nothing. He splayed out on his back, plopped on his nearby VR headset, and listened to heavy rock as an audio visualizer danced to the beat before his eyes.
Before he knew it, it was dinner time. Part of him just wanted to crawl into the kitchen using the passthrough view to see where he was going, grab his food, and lay back on the floor, shoveling red beans and rice into his mouth, but he decided against it. His parents were already concerned about him enough as is. Instead he took off the headset, docked it, and rolled onto his feet.
The kitchen smelled heavenly of robust spices, and Reg quietly pulled himself a chair at the dining table, eyeing the steaming food in the take out containers. Without realizing, he began slowly leaning towards it.
“Looks like someone’s hungry,” His dad’s face caught him by surprise as it entered his sight. Those ice blue eyes of his always intimidated Reg for some reason, and he couldn’t help but to look away sheepishly. His dad gave him a hefty pat on the back, “Where’s your mom? Doesn’t she know we’re starving? I’ve been dying for this meal all day!”
“All day?” Reg eyed his dad disapprovingly. “Did you two plant the idea of BeeBee’s for a pre birthday meal in my head?” as angry as he pretended to be, he couldn’t help the smile creeping across his face.
“What!” His dad feigned shock. “No! Never! Me?!” He held his hand against his chest and paused. “No it was mostly your mother’s idea, blame her.” He cracked into a chuckle.
“Finally out of that call with Dr. Mohs, boy was he real perturbed!” His mom’s voice echoed through the far hall beyond the kitchen. “But he remembered his manners when he realized it was someone’s birthday.” She entered the kitchen, picking the food up with a triumphant smile.
“Well, tomorrow.” Reg corrected.
“Your birthday eve!!” She replied with the same jubilant tone.
His dad walked over to help place the food across the table and whispered low and loud to her, “Did you kick his butt?”
She snorted, “Oh I just made him listen to reason!” she adopted a formal posture, and spoke decisively, “Dr. Mohs as Head of Operations for the Lunar Colony Project your duty is to the well being of all NAXA personale beyond the Kármán line, and as that is currently three people,” She held up a hand with three fingers, “A low cost meal teleported for free for celebratory and moral boosting purposes is vital to the continuation of this program.”
His dad snorted this time. “How’d he look when you said that?”
“Like this!” and her face instantly became like stone, the definition of her features appearing more pronounced.
“Like this?” his dad mimicked, becoming statuesque as well.
“Yes! Like that!” she patted his shoulder jovially.
Reg’s eyes fell onto the plastic take out box in front of him and back up to his parents.
“Oh right! Dig in, I’m gonna grab everyone water.” His mom shooed the other two towards the food laid out on the table.
Reg hesitantly shuffled in his seat shamefully, somehow he’d forgotten to get everyone’s drinks.
“Don’t worry, just eat!” His mom called out, not turning around. Reg straightened instantly, hands already on his box, popping the lid off and letting out all that confined steam. His left eye immediately fogged, which he blinked away quickly. The hot, fresh meal before him filled his senses with mouth watering delight. Red beans and rice, crawfish etouffee, and of course, grilled sausage split right down the middle, lightly charred on both sides. His fork was already buried in the rice, picking up a little bit of everything, and on it’s way to it’s final destination.
The smile across his face was blissful and no one at the table dared to ruin the moment with idle conversation. Everyone stuffed themselves, leaving nothing to waste. And with full stomachs they gathered in front of the large screen in the living room to watch a movie, Reg's choice, before finally heading to bed.
Reg shuffled to the bathroom, stretching and yawning, took off his arm wraps and then brushed his teeth. He splashed water on his face and did his best to ignore the recent memory of his last bathroom visit. He looked up to his reflection, and practiced a smile. He looked like he had just smelled a cracked septic pipe.
He groaned, and buried his face in a towel.
His bed was beckoning him and he was too tired to resist its call. He crawled up the short ladder and flopped onto his bed. Undoing the puzzle of a knot his sheets were in, Reg made odd noises of frustration, until it all unfurled. He tossed it over himself and let his mind wander to sleep.
The room's lights automatically dimmed, the large clear ceiling overhead becoming dark and opaque, with the only sound to be heard was the whirring of the air circulator.
Reg tossed and turned to his side, snoozing peacefully. Silently, a small, cyan light appeared next to him, taking the form of a humanoid shape, with two long strips of light across the chest. They looked at Reg and turned away, shoulders sagged but fist clenched.
Somewhere other than here, a voice echoed in a hollow space, certain it wouldn't reach a single listener, "Reg, I'm going to make this your best birthday yet. I promise." And the light faded.
