Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

There must be something to it. Staring at his lover and hazy with fatigue, he felt angst like an embedded thorn. He struggled to clarify his thought. Zeke’s mind rolled around what was holy and what was depraved. He thought of the Christian concept of sin, humanity’s falling into evil. But wait, was it really sin? All sin was forgivable, right? If you repented, you could be forgiven anything.

No, that wasn’t right. The Christians, or the Catholics anyway, held there were two unforgivable sins. There were two things no one could come back from: presumption and despair. He nodded. That was it.

Presumption or pride was the bugaboo of the last two centuries. Zeke pressed his lips together. It was bitter irony that in the incredible bounty of the earth, humanity always erred in pride, in the presumption that they or their institutions could be God. The folly of presumption resulted in wars, genocide, totalitarianism and all other malevolent forms of evil. Once you thought you were above God, you couldn’t be saved.

But here, on the barren moon, where a little bit of god-like confidence could be useful, it was the other unforgivable sin that threatened to destroy: despair. It was the flipside of pride. If you lost all faith that there was a point to anything, then again, you couldn’t be saved. Despair was the problem. Despair was the active powerful dark malevolent force that threatened to undo the last of humanity.

Zeke felt there was nothing, except making sure the base didn’t depressurize, more important than battling despair. If too many of the crew succumbed to hopelessness, all was lost. And hopelessness, like slow moving lava that destroyed all in its path, was here in Moon Base Armstrong. There were some that had already given up and many were on edge.

He could fix his bricks. He could recover the University Pod data. He and Jerry could 3D scan 3D printer parts and create new 3D printers, indeed create it all from scratch. But somehow the crew had to believe. They’d have to hang onto the thought they were worth saving. Zeke needed Mark to understand this and he pondered how to tell him.

Zeke’s contactor buzzed. He picked it up and answered. “Mark, I’m glad you called. We need to talk. It’s important.” He frowned when hearing Mark’s request. “I’ll be right there.” He pulled out an electronic whiteboard from a storage cubby, wrote Habi a short note, and left his living quarters. He wondered at the mischief going on in the control room.

Mark was relieved to see Zeke enter the hangar. He waved him over to the control panel terminal. “Zeke, there’s odd things we see in the pod decent recording and we need your help.”

“Mark, we need to talk.”

“First, take a look at this.” Mark pointed to the screen showing a data log.

“Yeah,” Chuck added. “Tell him I had nothing to do with it.”

Zeke stopped and looked around. “What’s going on?”

“The telemetry from the supply pod cuts off just before the crash. We’re trying to figure out how it got erased.” Sally said. She pushed a chair toward Zeke.

“What Mark and Sally really mean is that they’re accusing me of causing the crash. They’re saying I erased the telemetry to cover it up.” Chuck wasn’t happy.

Zeke was in a different frame of mind. He shook his head. “Finger-pointing isn’t what we need.” He looked at the terminal. “Did you check the key-logger?”

Mark flinched. “This has a key-logger?”

“Of course,” Sally answered. “I should’ve thought of that.”

Zeke seated himself in front of the terminal and entered commands. “Give me the time the telemetry data stopped.”

Sally pointed to the video log she had on her display.

Zeke entered the time and scrolled though the data. He pointed. “Look, there were no key strokes during the descent until the alarm command was sounded after the crash.” He entered more commands and brought up the list of key strokes from the second terminal. Again he scrolled and again the data logger showed that no keystrokes happened during the pod descent. “Okay now let’s review any commands that relate to the log itself.”

Zeke, Sally, Mark, and Chuck were all huddled around the terminal. Mark could see that his accusation against Chuck was hasty. “Chuck, I may owe you an apology.”

Chuck glared at Mark and grunted in response.

Mark turned to Zeke. “What would cause something like this?”

“That’s a puzzle,” Zeke replied. “Maybe the pod stopped sending the telemetry.” He frowned. “But then we should have seen an ‘end signal’ in the telemetry log.” He stared at the data for a long moment and turned to Mark. “We’re being tested.”

“I was the one being tested,” Chuck said. “Doug and I were sitting here, we heard Thad report the yaw and request the thrusters be cut, and then the base shook like hell. That’s what happened. No one in here did anything when the pod went haywire.”

“That was a damn unlucky crash.” It was all Mark could come up with. “Chuck, you can see why I thought you had something to do with it.”

“Hold on everyone,” Zeke said as he arose from the control room chair. “We’re facing a much bigger enemy: despair.” He turned to Mark. “In the eighteenth century, when ships were lost at sea and, feeling death was upon them and seeing nothing but vast wasteland, the crews turned to God.”

Mark stared at Zeke and blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“This thing — the survival of humanity — it’s too big for us to carry. It’s too big for you to carry. We need to turn to God or the higher power of your choice.”

“God?” Sally asked. “How can anyone believe in a benevolent God or a benevolent universe after the gamma ray burst?”

“Because we survived,” Zeke answered. “Because we’re here and we can fight for everything.”

“We all saw what happened to our beloved earth,” Mark added. “Just look at the orange earthrise… and now the pod crash and the director and ArmCon.” He shook his head. “The crew’s badly shaken.”

“We need to give them a reason for hope,” Zeke replied.

Mark wondered at Zeke’s intensity but he saw the point. “Thad and I found a great reason for that hope you’re talking about. There’s a perfect cave less than a click away that’s bigger than Moon Base Armstrong and Japan Station combined. I need to tell everyone. Let’s get everyone together and lay out the situation.” He smiled. “Let’s assemble the crew so we can tell them it’s hard but it’s also promising.”

Zeke returned Mark’s smile. “Now that’s a plan.”

Mark watched the crew assemble in the Nexus and pined for the time just two days ago when the director and the ArmCon stood at the podium. He put on a brave face as the shaken crew, the hope for humanity’s future, came in and took their seats. He was pleased the remaining leadership took the front. Zeke Ben-Ami was right across from the podium with Chuck and Doug on one side of Zeke and Thad, Arthur Sledge — Chuck’s shift supervisor counterpart, and Sally on the other side. The Manufacturing Pod crew led by Jerry Papadopoulos was in the second row. Jerry had his team on either side of him that included Jim Staid, Gitty Chatterjee, Habibeh Rahimi and Brexton Little. Tina Bennet, who ran the Agriculture Pod, sat beside Brexton.

Mark considered Zeke’s caution about despair. He disagreed with his friend. The problem wasn’t despair, it was leadership. Mark wondered if he were up to the task but he wasn’t going to shirk it. Responsibility demanded that, when trouble called, you stepped up. No matter the difficulty or criticism or the unexpectedness of it all; duty required that Mark lead and lead he would.