The Men of the Moon

I promised I'd post on Monday, and by God, I'm posting this before midnight. 

I'd like to share another first draft of a story idea I had a while back. If I ever find it in myself to expand it, I'll make this longer and better-detailed. 

The communications with NASA had been broken. Both Thompson and Nelson tried their best to repair what they thought was the broken communications system in the lunar module. Thompson was a skilled engineer, and Nelson had just graduated from the University of Florida. They would have it repaired in no time, if they kept their hands steady, and didn’t manage to break the system even more while trying to fix it. The problem was, the communications were working just fine, no matter how much Thompson tried to convince himself that it was broken. After 20 minutes of losing contact with NASA, Thompson concluded that something was wrong with mission control.

“Do you think it’s a power outage?” Said Nelson, young and inquisitive. “Impossible” replied Thompson, the skilled engineer, a ten-year NASA employee. “There’s no way mission control would even think of losing power, kid. Billions of dollars isn’t going to stop progress” Thompson was correct. There’s no way NASA would risk a power outage, losing contact with a couple of astronauts in the middle of a crisis. There would be backup generators, and backup generators for the backup generators. There’d be at least a dozen in case of an emergency, and they’d go online in an instant. An instant had passed about 20 minutes ago. This wasn’t a power outage. 

“It couldn’t be something bad, could it? Like a fire?” Stammered Nelson, now worried. “Very unlikely, kid” replied Thompson. “Even if one of the computers had been set on fire, they’d have it put out with a fire extinguisher within 15 seconds, and on top of that, computers rarely catch fires.” This wasn’t a fire, and it wasn’t a power outage. It was something, much, much worse. 

The horrors, the fear, the culmination of the Cold War had come to fruition. As several flashes sparked from the distant Earth, Thompson and Nelson came to the final conclusion: Johnson and Khrushchev had finally had enough of one another. Could it have been over the rights to a country? Had Russian soldiers made it into Vietnam? At that point, it didn’t matter. It was war. Nuclear war. World War Three. What Einstein feared would be the worst, largest, and quickest war in human history.  

The twinkles on the surface of the once beloved planet symbolized the end of entire countries, entire cultures and civilizations. The flashes from the dying blue marble lasted about 3 hours, 4 hours at the most. Neither astronaut dared to check his watch to time the catastrophe. Before their very eyes, with each horrified blink, millions were atomized by atomic fire, the blaze of a dozen suns peeling their flesh off in an instant, if they were lucky. Many others weren’t. 

Thompson reflected, and was taken back to his high school science class in the urban jungles of an Iowa university.  While working towards his engineering degree, plenty of math, statistics, and science classes were required, and took up most of his time. One of his science teachers, an old, hunched-over Professor by the name of Boyle had worked on the Manhattan project in the 1940’s. He often looked upon the class with an uneasy disgust, lighting a cigarette every ten minutes, which damn near filled the room with the fresh smell of burning menthol.  

“All it takes is the splitting of one atom of Plutonium-239” Boyle muttered as the bell rang, interrupting his lecture “To end the lives of thousands and thousands of people. None o’ you were even born, there was a time when atomic power, weapons o’ this scale were thought to be impossible.” As he finished, Professor Boyle began to cough into his free hand, the one not holding the lit Marlboro. It was hard to believe that there was a time when atomic bombs were the stuff of science fiction, and when smoking was permitted in classrooms. Professor Boyle didn’t live to see Nelson’s graduation. It was unclear whether radiation or cheap tobacco was the cause. Nelson knew, however, that it was better to die in the instant flash of an atomic blast than to suffer at the hands of severe radiation poisoning.

Thompson wasn’t a doctor, but during his studies at Iowa, he read about the effects of radiation poisoning and the cancer that even mild doses of radiation could cause. At first, it begins with headache, nausea, and dizziness. If it isn’t treated properly, it turns into a severe weakness of both body and breath. In large, very large amounts, radiation can cause hair loss, bloody stools, bloody vomiting, low blood pressure, as well as a total shut-down of the immune system, and the dying of the body’s defenses, causing the blood cells to die dramatically. 

Wounds are unable to heal due to the platelets in the blood failing to work, and death occurs within an hour, if the patient is lucky. Many of the victims of the Japanese atomic bombs that weren’t instantly killed suffered this way. Thompson fell to his knees, now knowing this would be the fate of billions of humans on the little blue marble he once called home. After a few hours, it was over. The blue marble was now red and black with billions of tons of hot atomic ash.

Thompson stood beside Nelson, gazing at the dead planet. There was no way to return home. Both astronauts waited in the lunar module for hours after the war, saying nothing to one another, instead gazing glances. It was over. Their futures meant nothing, the earth now meant nothing. After the fourth hour, Nelson fell to the floor, screaming in mental agony. They were going to die on the moon. They were going to die slowly on the moon. They were going to die alone, on the moon. As Thompson hunched over in the fetal position, Thompson continued to gaze out of the window, with the same dull, speechless expression.

Thompson knew three things. One: The earth, and the thousand or so lucky survivors inside bomb shelters, couldn’t help them. Two: It was impossible for Earth to sustain complex life from now on. Three: There was only enough oxygen, power, food and water for two people to survive for about a couple of days, up to a week if they slept in the cold, took slow breaths, and starved themselves. Nelson knew this as well, and didn’t want to live to have that happen. 

“I’m going out there” Nelson muttered. “Please, for the love of God, let me go out there and die!” Nelson was a broken shell of a man. “Thompson! Please, please, please!” he blubbered, shaking on the floor in his suit. “I’m not going to stop you, Nelson” Thompson replied. “I’m not going to stop either of us.” He looked back at his comrade, with the same cold, empty look in his eye. “There’s nothing for us down there, so there’s no point in waiting for help… We’ll take as much oxygen as we can carry, walk as far as we can… And just breathe until there’s nothing left.” Neither wanted to starve to death, and suffocation seemed like the most peaceful, harmless option. They would slowly pass out from lack of oxygen, and eventually let go of life.

The two distraught astronauts put on their helmets, strapped on as much oxygen as they could carry, and stepped out of the lunar module. Neither one dared to look back at the coffin that would have held them both. Each of them had about 4 hours of oxygen in their suits. They both decided to walk as far as they could. Nelson figured, if both of them kept a steady pace, they could walk about 5 miles north, near one of the moon’s craters in the sea of tranquility. Tranquility was the best hope they had for a peaceful death, and so, both of them began to walk to the north. 

Hours passed. Thompson and Nelson walked north, towards the sea of tranquility, daring not to look back at the dead rock, Earth. Thompson kept a steady breath, but Nelson, still panicking, was running out of oxygen, and running out of it fast. He was breathing too fast, and was exhausted. After reaching his suit’s limits, he collapsed into the lunar soil. He would be dead within 15 minutes. Thompson shook his head. “Poor kid” he said to himself. Himself… He was the only one left. With his head down, Thompson made his way north. He had about an hour of oxygen left. He’d make it about a mile or two.

Before long, Thompson fell to his knees. He had less that ten minutes left. “Okay, now what?” the lone astronaut said to himself. “What were we even trying to prove? We could have cured cancer, hell, we could have made it to Mars, but no, we had to choose blowing those Japs of the face of the earth, and now everyone’s gone with them!” Thompson had to use his last minutes of consciousness left to do something bold and symbolic. He wouldn’t go down in any history books, but he figured eventually, someone would pass by and look at the Earth and its brilliant white satellite, the moon. And so, Thompson began to draw in the lunar soil. 

Using his thick, padded gloves, Thompson drew a circle into the soil. As the minutes passed by, he took shorter breaths, drawing seven rings around the circle. As his helmet began to fog up, Thompson drew little dots in the circle, about 94 in total. Thompson’s last will and testament was complete. As he finished dragging his thick glove across the dry, rough moon dust, he stood back, reflecting at his masterpiece. It was a plutonium atom, just like the one Boyle drew on the chalkboard decades before. 

Thompson’s vision blurred. He had ran out of oxygen, and began to gasp at the seemingly toxic air inside of his suit. It was now filled with carbon dioxide, which humans are unable to breathe. Gasping and wheezing, Thompson fell to the ground next to his sand drawing, and after 30 seconds of desperately clinging to consciousness, trying to stay awake, he finally passed out. It didn’t take long for Thompson to join his fellow astronaut as a corpse on the moon. His body would lay there for the rest of time, next to a drawing of a plutonium atom.