The Mission

The sand cliff rose at a very sharp angle as I stood at the bottom. The gorse bushes with the bright yellow flowers that grew everywhere had left it barren, sure that nothing could grow in its sifting slopes. I climbed up and came down with long weightless steps. This was the closest I had come to flying. The sand flew effortlessly through my bare toes, lifting me up as I felt the air whooshing past me. I was free and couldn’t feel my legs, knees - I was one with the sea breeze and the afternoon sun, streaming all  around me. Every time I was at the top, I waited a few minutes then drank in the sight of the waves pounding on the beach below.The shore curved and disappeared into the shimmering distance on my right. On the left were the natural arches where the waves slipped in and emerged in a tumult of roaring exuberance. The sun was leaning westward, the sand was purple striped in the shaded areas. It felt blissful as I closed my eyes. I could see the warm glow of the sunny skies through my closed eyelids. And then came the glorious flying descent!  It struck me while moonwalking down that I was able to walk straight up the dune.  This was not how it had happened, on Silas Beach.  The only way I could climb up the dune was on all fours, slipping and sliding to the top.

I was dreaming, an exhilarating, liberating dream that I was reluctant to let go of. There was a voice that kept interrupting as my dream gradually dissolved into consciousness. 

“Bhumi to Mayari, Bhumi to Mayari, are you there?”, a quiet chuckle, “Of course you are!”

“Mayari here, all systems good” I responded in as crisp a tone I could muster. Not that there was anything I even remotely knew about the “systems”.  I was a mere passenger on the Mayari flight to the moon and Bhumi was the name of the control station on Earth.

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Mankind had not yet extended its reach beyond its own moon when it came to manned flights, but there was a promising project, popularly known as “Mayari”, that had been going on for many years. The facts were shrouded in myth. It was commonly assumed that this was an effort to create a parallel world for human settlement on the moon. The effort was a collaboration of  scientists and engineers all over the world - a truly unique Utopian coalition where politics or even international clout did not muddy the waters.

A few years ago after a particularly boisterous party, all my friends were outside looking up at the bright harvest full  moon. The non-stop  drinks had elevated us to a state of  philanthropic euphoria and it was on a whim that we had all volunteered for the Mayari project. And that was that, the forgotten climax of a helluva party. 

Fast forward to just ten months ago, when I received a call from an unlisted number. The first non-committal phone call came  from a recruiter asking me some questions. He stated that I was being actively sought for in a new start-up “Spacers”. The next month was a whirlwind of phone calls, brief interviews and it was only when I joined that I learned that this was the home of the “Mayari” project. 

One of the founders of the project was Dr. Akiba. He attributed his interest in space to his mother, who would sing lullabies about Mayari, the moon goddess of the Philippines. Very soon, the project was christened “Mayari”. I was apprehensive at the  start and after three months, it was announced that I was the Mayari envoy for next May.

I sat down on the closest chair when I heard that, my mind a complete blank.  As it sank in, the office interior around me faded into a gray nothingness. I realized that a feeling of terror overshadowed my excitement.  Was it the fear of leaving Earth? I knew that was not the reason. That feeling of dread pervaded my mind at times. Try as I might, my rational side could not plumb the reasons for it. The feeling of impending inevitability would sometimes be a tactile thing.

When I look back objectively, at that gestation period, it was indeed a relaxing, warm and friendly atmosphere . It was a blur of knowledge that I soaked in almost without realizing it. Although, secretly, I was still terrified at times, as the months flew by, I was deemed a natural. This was an immense prestige as my family and friends kept telling me, leaving me with no way to voice my fears.

Two months before I was scheduled to fly to the Moon my friends gave me a send off at Silas beach and strangely the “moonwalk” down that sandy dune and the vista of the sea and the sun was like an epiphany. I was still scared, yet I had a feeling  that this was my destiny.

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So here I was in the rocket. My terror during take-off and the medications to calm my nerves must have triggered the vivid moonwalking dream. The interior of the rocket looked more like a studio apartment, reminiscent of my student days, rather than the interior of rockets I had seen in numerous Hollywood oldies. I followed instructions, sent updates, and explored the numerous silver screens that stared silently at me. The screens were mesmerizing, unlike anything I had seen even in the advanced facilities of the Mayari complex. They looked as fragile as the surface of a rainbow colored bubble and a light seemed to move across the surface. I peered really close and could almost feel the whispers in a deep silence. 

After the prescribed pill induced sleep, I had two more days more to reflect on how I had ended up here. Initially, I noticed patterns on the screens and fleeting images that caught the corner of my eyes. As soon as I faced the screens, they turned an impervious gray.  This went on for some time till a distant whirring sound caught my attention and I turned to face the screens. The screens brightened and I could see my thoughts,  answers and conjectures that arose in my brain on them. Images of my childhood home with the gates on which I swung under the fragrant honeysuckle flowers, the starry sky as I lay in bed at night flickered across the silver screens, a giant kaleidoscope of  my memories. The moon appearing over the crest of the hilly road winding upward on the night after I learned of my father’s passing, the first snowfall I ever saw, the first tingling of being in love, the feeling of belonging when I looked into my partner’s eyes,  the touch of a small hand that nestled into mine - pictures and feelings translated into colorful collages, illuminated the screens. 

When I woke from the spell the screens had cast on me, the cabin was darker. The lights turned brighter as I stretched and I knew what had happened on the screens was not a result of any technology that we humans knew of. This was the outcome of a civilization far more advanced than ours. It was no surprise when the screens turned on and the quiet narration in my head began. There were symbols which seemed to be faintly familiar, maybe from the depths of my long ago classical studies, symbols and images of imminent danger. Images of panicking crowds, of  leaders engaged in discourse, of riots that were quelled with words and empathy flitted across the screen. The environment portrayed in the images seemed ancient, the message that this was the future was urgent and clear at the same time. 

Neither did I know nor did I understand the root of this knowledge that was imprinted on my mind - I remembered the urgency and that I would instinctively know when the time to act came. My feeling of dread was now a forgotten memory, I was more alive than I had ever been.

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The view as the rocket was pulled into the moon’s weak gravitational field was wondrous as it landed on the base near the Copernicus  crater. The  vehicle nicknamed “Sluggard”, in jest, because it was so fast, picked me up and brought me into the Michael Collins camp. 

Sometimes, when it was dark and the blue earthlight made faint shadows on the lunar scape, I thought of the last messages I had perceived on the rocket. Were they real? Were they figments of my imagination and long lost tribal knowledge? 

On the regular dusk sojourns outside the camp, that fell to me on a rotational basis, I  would stop the Sluggard and revel in the serenity. On one of these occasions, as I was heading back to the camp I was  feeling particularly restful.  So I stopped and drank it all in. On the horizon, I spotted a faint shadow that looked like a horizontal dervish. I strained to identify what it was and it started approaching at an incredible speed.  I knew going away from the camp into the wider unknown would be suicide, so I started the Sluggard and pushed forward. Horrified as it headed straight towards me, I knew the terror rising and the taste of bile in my mouth….. And the voice inside me told me, this was my time to act.  

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