Luke Marusiak - Lifeboat Moon

“Safe?” Thad asked. “You’re concerned about another pod crash?”

“Both Director Hayashi and me believe it’s better to get most of the crews in the cave first.”

Thad was silent a long moment. He tapped the corner of his helmet requesting private communications. When Mark opened the private channel Thad stated the obvious. “You believe someone may crash a pod.”

“It’s happened before.”

“So it wasn’t Art?”

“Art wasn’t alone in whatever he did.”

“Your plan’s to pile everyone in the cave? Mark, you realize how much vibration a pod crash causes. It was a pod crash that uncovered this cave.”

“I know. We’re still fighting what Zeke calls the demon of despair.”

“Major Martelli, am I your right hand man or not?”

“Thad, both you and Zeke are — along with Sally.”

“Then why haven’t you included me in these discussions?”

“I don’t know… I should’ve. Thad, I’ll tell you what’s going on but don’t react to it and don’t share it with Tina.”

“I won’t”

“Doug’s the one who sabotaged the pod. He’s also the one who made an unapproved copy of the director’s post gamma ray burst plan.”

“He’s the one that shared the culling idea with Art?”

“Yes. While you and your team were getting the water well working, Zeke, Sally, and I scoured the logs to find this out. We also found altered pod descent algorithms — daemons — one to crash a pod into Japan Station and one to crash a pod into the Nexus.”

“Damn! Then why’s Doug still operating as shift manager?”

“Because he’s a software coding expert and we believe he put a Trojan horse virus in the control room code.”

Thad whistled. “So the plan is to get safe in the cave before he can crash another pod.”

“There’s more and you’re not going to like it.”

“Tell me.”

“We’re trying to get him to trust Chuck enough to tell him about the virus and missing remotes.”

“Chuck? You trust Chuck above me or Zeke or Sally?”

“No. But Chuck is the only one Doug would trust.”

“Hey you two,” Zeke’s voice came through the shared channel. “We have a schedule to keep.”

Thad and Mark switched off their private channel. “I was just discussing our plans with Thad,” Mark said.

“Let’s get this cave running,” Thad said. He bounded into the large common area. “I’m going to see how Tina’s doing in the new Agriculture Branch.”

Doug knew something was up. The work crews were moving at a near frantic pace to get the cave habitable. He also noted that, during the hour shift overlap, Sally and Jim would find an excuse to ‘check something’ and he’d be alone with Chuck. It happened nearly every shift change and Chuck would drop hints about how depressed he was. He would talk about his lost fiancé, Mia, the great state of Washington, and of how pointless the crew’s struggles were. But only when they were alone.

Doug was no fool. Whatever game Mark, Zeke, Sally, and Jim had planned for him; he wasn’t playing. There was only one game that meant anything, only one task, one holy mission — destroy the lunar bases and all of humanity once and for all.

“Solar array work crew is back,” Jim said as he looked at the hangar monitor. “I’ll make sure they get in okay.”

Doug watched Jim bound down to the hangar with disgust. That Dudley Do-Right is worse than Art by a mile, he thought.

“Depressurizing load lock,” Jim called up.

Doug licked his lips. I could tweak the status reading and cause that whole team to get blown out into the crater. It was possible but it would be a one shot deal. He could liberate five or six people but the moon bases would still struggle on for a time. He let the accurate reading stand. The go-to guy, Thad, came in with his team of four. They were all in energetic discussion of the day’s achievements — challenges overcome, decisions to forge ahead, and ultimate success. Doug hated them all.

The team disappeared into the Nexus and Jim returned to his seat next to Doug. One thing was certain — Jim wouldn’t be able to prevent Doug from executing malicious code. Doug surmised that Jim was to keep an eye on him but knew that was a fool’s errand. He owned the control panel software in a manner no one knew about. He had embedded code in embedded code and back doors that no one in Moon Base Armstrong had a prayer of removing. But it wasn’t enough. The cave preparation unsettled him.

No one here matters , his inner voice scolded. It was the beautiful blue-green earth that meant everything. Who are these miserable piss ants to survive when the core of all that was good of life itself was destroyed? All these self-important prima donnas prancing around like they matter. This must be stopped.

“Three days,” Jim said as he reviewed the task sheet. “In three days we’ll have enough power and enough quarters to have crewmembers live in the cave.”

“Really?” Doug asked. “I thought it would take longer than that. It’s unwise to move crew into the cave before all is ready.”

“In many ways the cave is better than our moon bases,” Jim replied. “We’ll be at pressure and will have enough power to heat the place up. Our permanent home is almost ready.”

Our permanent home was destroyed , Doug mused to himself. The insufferable arrogance of these carbon-based ape-descended collection of firing neurons must be stopped. And I’m the one to do it. Doug looked at the control panel and sighed. He didn’t always hate humanity.

There was a time he believed humanity was redeemable. Not at the ridiculous number of nine billion people of course. That was why, on earth, he secretly believed in the compulsory sterilization organizations and thought they should be dispersed to do their work on most of civilization. Doug read all of the anti-natalism — people should never procreate ever — books he could get his hands on. He didn’t wonder, he knew, that all human existence was suffering.

That’s why the computer scientist and hacker became an environmentalist. It wasn’t human life, it was the other life he relished. He populated his house with cats, dogs, and a veritable green house of plants. But even natural life was too messy and rife with suffering. Doug loved nature when it was static and predictable — but it wasn’t. So he cleared his house of pets and plants, posted Sophocles’ declaration ‘not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best’ on his wall, and dove deeper into computer programming and the dark web.

There was god-like power in the things he could do with code. The code he developed wasn’t just predictable, it was a contest of will and intelligence. He loved white hat hacking and he loved artificial intelligence driven control systems. It was his stunning expertise, borne of a focus few possessed, that caught the attention of NASA. Doug was asked to design a resilient robust control system for NASA’s long delayed moon base. He jumped at the chance. There were two big attractions to joining the Moon Base Armstrong crew.

The first was that he was writing code that controlled virtually everything in the new moon base. But it wasn’t just the code that was important. Doug was presented the opportunity to go to the most barren place possible, with the fewest humans, run a lonely shift and ply his craft.

He was the fly in the moon colony ointment long before the gamma ray burst. Doug placed back doors in various points in the control system he planned to use once back on earth. He hated the reach and the exuberant quest of the lunar base when there was so much suffering and injustice in the world. Who was NASA and JAXA and humanity itself to strive to spread out when wars, social injustice, and inequality racked the world?