When it's your time to go...

I can't do this Lance repeats to himself as he feels the pressure building up in his spacesuit. The pressure stops up his ears deadening the sound of mission control droning on and on in the helmet headpiece.  The synthetic sounding voice of the mission commander is saying something about launch conditions, but Lance can only hear his heart pounding in his ears. He clenches his eyes tighter, so he doesn’t have to see the technicians activating switches inside the console and seeing to it that his restraints are in order.  He knows they’re strapping him in to a death trap, bound for a barren rock in the sky that has claimed so many before him. Despite being nothing more than a store clerk in a small town, Lance Bakersmit is going to the moon.

There is a change, Lance doesn’t feel the restraints tightening around his wrists and ankles. He tries to listen over his heartbeat, which has begun to stutter into a rhythm reminiscent of ragtime. However, his heart’s song and the sound of mission control in his helmet block out any hope of hearing what’s happening in the capsule around him. Lance knows he needs to open his eyes, but a part of him believes that if he keeps them closed maybe he’ll wake up from this nightmare, and not be rocketed to his doom.

I can't be here, Lance thinks as the voice of the mission commander shifts into a steady rhythmic beat that can only indicate a countdown. His heart threatens to run through a concerto of the world’s most obscure drum solos as Lance struggles against his harness and restraints. He’s bound in every possible place, straps across his chest, cuffs at his wrist and ankles, even his helmet is attached to the headrest of his seat. Lance whimpers as he realized he can’t even contort in his suit, there’s no escaping this roller coaster ride into the sky.  Lance’s heart genuinely stops as he realizes there’s an awful silence from his headset

He swallows fearfully, his ears pop.

“Liftoff”

Lance’s eyes snap open as he rides the force of an impossible explosion off the earth and into the atmosphere. He can’t even scream as he feels his organs pressing on his bones. Eyes water as the view from the little capsule window fades from blue to black in seconds. How can that be possible? Lance knowns the atmosphere must take more than a few seconds to traverse, and yet the sky he’s known disappears in a few excruciating moments. Did he black out? Is this really a dream? Lance feels the tug of gravity weaken as the rocket continues to burn further and faster through the void of space. He blinks tears out of his eyes as the dark view from the capsule window becomes spotted with stars, he begs those lucky stars to let him wake up in the backroom of his uncle’s shop. Please let it not be me! Lance feels as if his heart will explode. There’s a gasp, the rocket sheds a booster, the acceleration smooths, Lance can feel his chest relax. Did I just die of a heart attack? Lance realizes this would be an anticlimactic end after his attempt to evade the annual Lunar Launch. In hindsight it may have been wiser to not try and hide in his best friend’s cabin upon hearing of his selection. Granted, Lance had never heard of anyone escaping the Lunar Launch committee. They were like the Mounties of old, they always get their man. This year, Lance was there man. Selected at random from the population, collected, conditioned, and immediately set to launch. Lance had been in such a state of shock during the twelve hour astronaut crash course he’d been given on the drive from his hideout to the launch that he didn’t know the first thing about being on the moon! 

No one ever comes back, is the only sure thing Lance knew about the Lunar Launch Program. No one ever comes back. The pale sphere of Lance’s destination came into view of the small circular window to his capsule. Lance watched in horror as the grey surface filled his view, blocking out the stars, approaching all too quickly. They say it takes days to reach the moon by rocket, yet it seemed to Lance that he hardly had an hour before impact. Will they just crash me into the surface? Lance feels his pulse flicker again as he imagines riding through the sky just to explode on the surface of the moon. Would anyone on the surface even notice? Had he ever seen the moon flicker with firecrackers as the previous Lunar Launch approached? Had he ever cared to watch?

Lance thought of his home. A dingy little apartment in a backwater town with a job that was going nowhere. It wasn’t an epic life but it was his. He tried to think of what he was leaving behind: his uncle’s shop, his coworkers, the spider plant on his back windowsill, the stray dog that he left scraps for at the corner, his parents. Would they miss him? Would they even notice he was gone? The Launch announcement was a public affair, but no one really paid attention to it anymore. It wasn’t an honor or a privilege, just an unlucky lottery. Every year some shmuck got shot into space, never to be seen or heard from again. That’s what the Launch did. They did it for “the good of all mankind.” What a sick irony. Lance thought as the surface of the moon began to become clearer. 

It will be soon, Lance realized. At this rate the surface of the moon was mere minutes away. Minutes away from crashing, and if not crashing, then suffocating slowly on the surface of desolate rock so far from home. I don’t want to die! Lance wept to himself as the moon’s gravity caused the little capsule to quiver and quake on its quick journey. My life may have been ordinary, but it was still mine! Lance felt the restraints on his ankles and wrist release. He blinked through his tears to see his hands float free in the loose gravity. A voice murmured over his headset that he was about to touch down soon, he’d be able to assume control in sixty seconds. Lance’s eyes rushed around the capsule cabin, all around him were buttons and dials but nothing that indicated a control he could understand. There isn’t even a joystick! Quivering Lance’s hands floated over glowing buttons and steady switches, any one of them could do anything. Lance was at a loss. He could hear the clock running down in his helmet, knowing that he’d be on his own soon, left to die of his own ineptitude out in space like the dozens before him! Lance heard the count complete, the capsule shuttered, the speed slow. The voice in his helmet ceased, he was on his own. For a moment Lance reveled in the gentle silence of the capsule. No rockets roaring at his heels no voices in his head, nothing. Lance watched as the surface of the moon sped past him, grey surface pocked with craters and old rocket debris. It flowed past him as his capsule orbited quietly of it own accord. I wonder if I can just stay up here? He pondered as the capsule shifted into the shadow of the moon.

A shutter. Lance’s hands shot back down to their armrests, gripping themselves against the movement. What now? Lance struggled to breath as in the darkness of the moon’s shadow he felt the capsule shift, sink, towards the darkened surface of the moon. This is it! He wailed in his heart as the capsule sank to the dark shadow of the moon. He was to die on the surface of the moon, alone, and out of sight. No wonder no one noticed the Lunar Launchers after they flew! He shut his eyes and waited for the end. Despair filled the very depths of his soul and Lance wished once more to wake up to the angry face of his uncle catching him asleep in the inventory again. How he wished he could be waking up to another angry family argument after an otherwise mediocre Thanksgiving meal. How he wished he was someone else.

Lance felt the capsule collide with something, a sudden smooth jolt as if caught. The capsule did not crumble or crush him, nor did he feel the pressure and air running out of his space suit. Lance felt a light shine on his face and he blinked his eyes open to see a face looking in on him from the capsule window. He shook his head in his helmet to shake away his tears, but sure enough he saw a face. A warm white smile looked down on Lance from a well light background, curling hair and bright eyes looked welcoming and wonderful. Lance could hear the clunk of machinery poking at his capsule, could hear the sound of the door being opened. In a daze hands removed him from the restraining seat, pulled him free and extracted the helmet from his head. On wobbling legs they led Lance from the capsule into the warm well lit interior of a strange habitation. Like a newborn faun, Lance struggled to find his footing in the loose gravity, but soon was seated amongst a crowd of welcoming faces none the same. 

“Where am I?” Lance asked afraid he’d pass out at any moment.

“Welcome to the moon!” said several voices at once. 

“Relax everyone!  Looks like he’s shell shocked!” said an African American women in a green jumpsuit. She sat next to Lance and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re one of the Lunar Launch candidates right?” Lance nodded. “Welcome to the moon, you’re going to be just fine!”

“But…. But… no one ever comes back from the moon…” Lance babbled. “It’s a death sentence…”

“Ha!” the comforting woman chortled. “That’s what the bots want you to think! They’ve been tossing humans at the moon for decades as revenge for sending so many machines ‘to their doom,’ vengeful AI must find it amusing. Sure some people died, some people crashed, but eventually we got a handle on the moon and made a safe space here!” She gestured to the thriving underground living space around him. Lance glanced to see dozens of faces and number of structures around him. “We build more with every Launcher we save and live here on the moon, we figure so long as the bots don’t know we’re actually surviving, they’ll keep sending people to us!”

“And their supplies!” interjected an old man from the back of the crowd. There was some chortling amongst the crowd. Lance felt himself chuckle with the crowd, its energy infectious. For the first time in days he felt as if he actually could be alright.

“Remember, it may feel like the end of the world, but that’s just because you’re not on it anymore.” Lance looked up into the welcoming smile of those around him, and for the first time in a long time, felt as if there was life left to be had.