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You May as Well Live on the Moon (for Sir Caleb)

Catie fingered the piece of paper with delicate care as she walked home from work. Passers-by, wearing the unstylish attire of lower-grade workers or discarded clothing from last month's fashion craze, watched her with interest. Not only was paper-- and trees for that matter-- a rare sight, but a woman as well dressed as she walking out-of-doors? An elderly lady, white hair stuffed into an old discarded version of a UV-protectant sun hat, shook her head in amusement, wondering how such a specimen could have missed the 6 o’clock hov-train.

She walked past them all, unconscious of their stares or how out-of-place she appeared in her new gray secretary-issue garment. Ordinarily Catie wouldn’t have indulged in spending all her transportation chips on paper, but this was special. She had received another transmission from her cousin, Amos, and she felt the need to touch it.

The air felt lovely on her arms as they swung back and forth with her gait. Why don’t I walk home more often? she wondered, squinting up into the blue-green sky at the daystar that refused to be blotted out by the planet’s sun. I wish I was up there with you.

As soon as Catie stepped through her door, which opened automatically as it identified her DNA, her mother demanded, “Where have you been?” Catie stopped to scrape white powder off the bottom of her shoes while her mother waited, hands on hips.

“I got another trans from Ame!” Catie said, leaving her shoes on the self-cleaning rug next to the door. “I had to wait for Joe to convert it to old alphanumeric characters-- wait! Let me help.”

Her mother, a long-haired short woman with light black hair, was gasping under the weight of a large package a curtained hole in the wall just spat onto the kitchen floor.

Catie panted as she helped maneuver the matter-box-- which had probably been a few pairs of anti-grav shoes at one time-- onto the stainless steel counter. “What all did you order?”

“Feels like it sent me the whole output instead of a couple tomatoes.” Her mother lifted the top, eyebrows pointing arrows down into the container. “I didn’t say ‘potatoes’!”

“Something must be wrong with the voice transmitter. Where do they grow potatoes these days?”

“On Luna. I thought the bill seemed high!”

“The moon?” Catie jumped up and down, causing her brown hair to fly crazily from its severe bun. She looked seventeen again, despite her professional attire. “Are you going to send them back? Hey, would you pack me in instead?”

Mother looked at daughter in amusement. “Did Amos ask you to visit again?”

Catie sighed, pushing her hair back with both hands. “We joke about it all the time... he discovered some tunnels under the surface and he said he would show me.”

“Well, if you’d save your money and stop buying all this paper--”

“I know!” Catie danced out of the kitchen. “I’ve been dreaming about going for so long. What is space, anyway? It’s nothing... I feel like I could walk through that door and be there!”

“I’m going to have a real human being come and pick this up,” her mother muttered. “Machines these days!”

Catie bolted awake. “Oh, no!” she cried, glaring at the digital alarm that hadn’t woken her. “Mom! I’m going to be late! Can you call me an HV?”

Running into the bathroom, Catie found that the appliances had not switched themselves on at the usual time. Instead of waiting for them to warm up, she had to manually brush her teeth and hair, dress herself, and skip the makeup application program.

“Mom! Is the car here?”

She grabbed her bag and slipped her shoes on. They were still powdery.

“The rug’s not working!”

Catie paused to hear total silence, realizing that no one was listening to her.

She turned her attention to the front door. Pressing the key on the pad next to the door produced no effect, so Catie pried open a compartment in the door that accessed a doorknob.

“Automation!” Catie grunted, swinging the door open viciously. “This is so twentieth century.”

She stepped outside and almost ran into a man in a yellow transportation uniform.

“Excuase me, ma’am, but is this the residence that wanted that shipment of taters remooved?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess that’s the box.” Catie motioned to the matter container resting on the porch.

The man grunted his thanks and surveyed the job. “Bad day for business today. Machines breaking everywhere. Woulda had a robot to help me and all, but it had to die on us.”

“I know what you mean,” Catie replied politely, walking around him to the automated hover vehicle parked on the curb in front of the man’s company truck. The back door opened automatically for her as a hidden sensor estimated her approach, and she slid into the imitation plastic seat. As usual, the car was empty with a reflective piece of glass preventing the passenger from seeing the analytical engine that occupied the front. “101 Battery,” she told the invisible computer.

The car didn’t move.

Catie glanced up but only saw herself looking back. “Computer! 101 Battery!”

There was a pause, then the vehicle began to rise.

“About time,” Catie muttered, turning her attention to some data appearing on her pocket-sized info-pad.

She was so engrossed in her task, estimating the amount of coffee she would have to generate according to her employer’s upgraded schedule for the day, that she didn’t realize how long the ride was taking.

“Computer? How much longer till destination?” Catie waited, then recalled the verbal emergency code to which all machines were programmed to respond. “Computer! Situation!”

“In the process of being towed by the Global Transportation Company, united with Luna Exportation Incorporated, due to--”

“Computer! Stop!” Catie desperately scraped her nails on the impersonal spill-resistant seat.

“--malfunction within city limits causing delay in most forms of individual transportation. Destination: United Robotics. Estimated time of travel: 6 hours.”

“What is this? All this technology and I can’t even get where I want to go!” Catie bit her lip in frustration. “Computer! Is there any way to talk to the tow truck?”

“Any communications with towing vehicle are disabled or unavailable,” the computer replied in monotone. “In the process of being towed by the Global Transportation Company, united...”

Catie let out a sharp sigh and bounced unhappily on the seat. Resigning herself to the trip, she watched the landscape float below her. Normal traffic scuttled in lines below her; quicker, long-distance traffic cruised a few miles higher in the air. The gentle hum and slight sway of the vehicle gently eased Catie back to sleep.

She awoke when the hum ceased. The car was on the ground in front of a big warehouse. She could see the man who was at her front door earlier walking toward it. She tried the door, but the keypad was unresponsive.

Another hum began, and the HV began inching forward. She realized that she was being pulled into a dark hole as a shadow began to blot out her view of the buildings.

“Hey! Hey!” Catie hollered, pounding on the window frantically as the man’s back disappeared from sight.

“Hey! Help!” she screamed louder as the darkness closed in. She thrust her fists against the roof, doors, and mirror frantically.

“Hello?” a voice in the darkness called, and then Catie heard the door being manually opened from the outside. Hands pulled her out of the dark back seat and into the half-light of a room edged with matter-boxes and two other hover vehicles.

“Where am I?” Catie asked the blue flight uniformed man before her, blushing at the cliché.

“You were about to get shipped off into space,” the man replied good-humoredly. “How’d you get in there?”

“Long story,” Catie blushed again. “I’m really going to be late for work now. Is there a depot around here?”

“Few kilometers. I’ll give you directions if you don’t mind walking.”

“That’s f--” she began, but suddenly the light on his mustached face was extinguished.

Footsteps shuffled behind them and Catie turned to see two large bodies standing in the doorway, blocking most of the outdoor light.

“This young lady needs a ride?” a high-pitched masculine voice inquired.

“What the-- hey, put that down!” Catie heard the man next to her yell, but something flashed and hit her in the head so that she heard and saw nothing else.

“I tell you! I can’t do anything about it!”

Catie woke up again, reaching for her alarm clock.

“We’re going the wrong way, I tell you! Can’t you get these confounded machines to work?”

The clock wasn’t there. Instead, she touched cold steel.

“It’s stuck in auto-pilot.”

“Well, get it un-stuck!”

What’s today? Where... A foot prodded her side.

“You okay, kid?”

Catie bolted upright, recognizing the voice that was uncommonly high for a man’s.

She didn’t have to ask. She’d seen enough documentations to know that the flashing keypads and huge screen belonged to that of an interstellar ship. She’d also had enough experience with historic science fiction to know that the object pointed at her was not friendly.

“Where are we going?” she demanded, eyeing the heavyset, muscular man holding the concussion rod.

“Pretty far, if your friend would fix the blasted thing!”

Catie craned her neck to see the man in the blue uniform, the pilot of the ship, sitting in one of the control chairs looking helpless. A second, slighter person was keeping him covered.

“Three minutes until landing,” said the deep female voice. “It’s too late.”

“First day on the job!” the man standing over Catie roared and aimed his weapon at the pilot. Nothing happened. “Blast!” he cried, tossing it aside. “Shoot him!”

The woman, too, tossed her rod aside. “No good,” she said, and cuffed the pilot in the side of the head instead.

Catie couldn’t see anything else. The room began to shake violently and she covered her mouth in terror. Loud voices battled one another over the controls while Catie buried her head between her knees.

The ride became smooth again, and Catie looked up at the screen to see a bright white surface rushing toward them. The stars were still visible and the sky was still black. She saw a glass-like covering open to let the ship pass, and then buildings came into view.

“Set down away from there! Turn!” the man screeched.

“Outside of city limits, not in the desert!” the woman growled back.

They skimmed over houses and warehouses like those of her planet until they disappeared and what looked like farmland appeared.

“Land the thing!” the man commanded his partner.

A few jolts later and Catie found herself stationary. Her captors had left so hastily that the control panels were still blipping.

“Mister! Mister?” Catie stumbled over to the chair where the pilot was slumped.

He opened an eye. “Are they gone?”

When Catie nodded, he sat up, embarrassed. “I figured that if I pretended to be out she wouldn’t hit me again.”

“Where did they take us?”

“The ship was programmed to make a routine trip to the moon, so that’s where we ended up. Good for me they didn’t steal anything but a ride. And it's pretty hard to hide in a settlement this small.”

“We’re on Luna?” Catie gaped in disbelief.

“Sorry. You’re really going to be late for work.”

Catie wasn’t listening. She rushed down the corridor and found the escape hatch open. She climbed the ladder until she found her feet firmly planted on the white sand. Looking around her, she saw the end of a field of green growing things in one direction and barren crags and gullies in another, room for further development until the greenhouse was to be expanded again, as Amos explained in his letter. Two dark figures were growing rapidly smaller toward the vegetation, but a figure coming from the desert was getting bigger.

“Amos!” Catie knew she was out of her head, but it could be. She ran, stumbling under the light gravity. Sooner than she expected, she was being swung around in his arms.

“Hey!” he was saying, craning his neck to look into her face, which was buried in his shoulder. “What in the world!”

Catie couldn’t stop laughing and crying; she held on as if a moon beam would rip him away. “I just walked out my door today and... have you ever wished something so hard that it came true?”

-amanda johns 2003