kbps

I fash­ioned a small pod, most­ly out of paper and alu­minum, as per the instruc­tions from a kit. The trip there was excit­ing, until we passed orbit range (it seat­ed two), when it became alarm­ing­ly clear that we were in space in a ball of paper and alu­minum, and would prob­a­bly die soon, quick­ly, and painful­ly. “Shit, this was a real­ly stu­pid idea.”

Space trav­el appar­ent­ly fos­ters a kind of delir­i­um, and at one point I almost stepped out of the pod for “my first space­walk,” eeri­ly placid, until my co-pilot stopped me, thank god.

I arrived in the mid­dle of the night. The moon base was very much like an air­port, men with flash­lights guid­ing me to the ter­mi­nal. Even the insides, filled with rows of grey, plas­tic seats, most­ly emp­ty due to the late hour, but marked by the occa­sion­al woman thumb­ing idly through a mag­a­zine, look­ing up at me briefly as I passed. “Aww,” I thought. “Astro­nauts’ wives.”

The moon had been col­o­nized for what felt like prob­a­bly 10 or 15 years. Every­one there worked there, like I’d imag­ine Antarc­ti­ca to be. Once out­side the sta­tion, I found myself in a con­crete plaza, with bench­es, a pedes­tri­an street, some small shops and restau­rants, by the look of things. Seem­ing­ly des­o­late beyond a block or two away. Small ameni­ties. Dozens of peo­ple out enjoy­ing the warm, arti­fi­cial atmos­phere. I looked up and saw Earth, ful­ly illu­mi­nat­ed by the sun.

I was gid­dy with pride that I had made it here myself. I approached a fam­i­ly eat­ing ice cream, struck up a con­ver­sa­tion. “Have you been here before?” “Yeah, you know, a cou­ple times.” Non­cha­lant. “Would you believe me if I told you I got here in a pod I made myself?” Dis­in­ter­est­ed, incred­u­lous, polite laugh­ter.

The return trip was a bit more har­row­ing. I remem­ber it being loud and painful; it required that I sev­er some wires con­nect­ed to nodes graft­ed onto my skin, each snip pro­duc­ing a vague, metal­lic, dizzy, nau­seous kind of pain. Alarms were sound­ing, I did­n’t think my pod would hold up. I must have blacked out, and soon I was para­chut­ing down into the Pacif­ic.

A week or so lat­er I told Ben and Jon about my trip, and invit­ed them on anoth­er. We made it up there with no prob­lems, hung out in the plaza in the sun­light. Look­ing up, con­struc­tion was being done on a kind of stained-glass bal­loon, a big sphere in a styl­ized, col­or-sat­u­rat­ed trib­ute to Earth, meant to inspire, I intu­it­ed, a rev­er­ence for all we had accom­plished as a species.

Sud­den­ly, a small fire­bomb was hurled unsuc­cess­ful­ly at a secu­ri­ty heli­copter, when we real­ized that the polit­i­cal cli­mate on the moon was unsta­ble, and that we had to leave before things got ugly.

We raced down dark flights of stairs, hur­ried but not fright­ened, though I did­n’t have faith in my abil­i­ty to get us back and was begin­ning to pan­ic. “Guys, I should tell you, sor­ry I did­n’t tell you ear­li­er, but, get­ting back is kin­da hard, I almost did­n’t make it last time, I’m not sure we’ll be able to do it, and even if we do I know it’ll be real­ly uncom­fort­able, I’m sor­ry.” I did feel guilty. But I guess the adren­a­line got me through it, and before we knew it we were tum­bling safe­ly down a chute into the base­ment of some facil­i­ty back on Earth.

I woke up around 5:30am, still brim­ming with pride at what I had done.