A women's magazine editor's take on the dark side of the moon
The eight hour trip to the moon was nothing compared to the dreadful toast Amelia had eaten that morning. How anyone could call a tooth paste like tube filled with bread tasting pate a toast was beyond her. But the story was up there, hundreds of thousands of miles away from her corner office at Vague Magazine.
Ten years after the first moon landing and those Nasa horny politicians were already dead set on discovering what the dark side had to offer. And since no one exploded on their way up anymore, why not send real life journalists to write about it?
It had become so common sense that Vague had now a whole vertical about it. 'Moon Style: How to get to the moon and back without messing up your hair' or 'How to skip quarantine by flirting in your Nylon pantyhose'. No wonder she was there, as editor in chief, but the breakthrough angle about the dark side she wanted to bring to her story had still to come to her.
"Ten years after the first moon landing and those Nasa horny politicians were already dead set on discovering what the dark side had to offer."
They arrived as usual, the space suit a dread and the moon station, uninviting. As soon as her helmet was off, her over the top hairdo was cause for much of the stir around her. Photographs would be taken, what were they thinking?
Her schedule was tight so she was manhandled to a rover and off to the site in less than an hour after arrival. As she rode, and since she had taken that trip before, as it was with all thing that were no longer a novelty, she looked nonchalantly at everything. 'Oh, there is pressure chamber to go outside. Sure, I have stood in this launching pad before. Off course I have driven through the dark road before, haven`t you?' Look, there`s the dark figure moving in the dim rover light.
Wait, what?
She had to look a second time, sure her senses had mislead her. There was nothing out there. The movement of the rover and the reflexes of the flashlights on hers and the driver's helmet were the only real things around her. The rushing shadow that conjured in front of their rover for a millisecond before, was not. Still, it was enough to stop them. Lanterns illuminated an extensive radius around them, but there was nothing to see, so they continued on, or more, insisted on, pushing through fear and anxiety, on their way to the dark crater, the biggest attraction outside of earth at the time.
As they reached the edge of it she remembered how awckward her first time there actually was. The expectations one has about a place with such a name builds up on the rocket and comes close to bursting while you ride there, but at the end, is nothing but a well lit, giant whole on the ground. No man made equipment inside. A natural structure as boring as the grand canyon. What could she even write about it?
The men started fidgeting and moving nervously around her. They all looked the same to her, anyway. Army men, used to alertness in war zones, looking for the enemy around every corner. Pathetic, she thought. Their enemy was now a million miles away, and still, their shoulders so tense you could see it through their space suit. She was so absorbed inside herself and the failing to see an interesting subject to write that she failed to notice the anxiety had something to do with her.
When she finally noticed something strange, it came in the form of air ruffling stones on the ground in front of her. She thought it interesting, but could not feel it through her protective gear. What she felt was the awe in which all faces looked at her, a mixture of terror and surprise rarely seen on earth anymore. And then it dawned on her. Air. 'The moon does not really have it, does it?' She thought.
"And then it dawned on her. Air. 'The moon does not really have it, does it?'"
But by then it was already too late. Whatever caused the tiny rocks on the ground in front of her to move had now pushed her with such a force she was thrown in the air. The fall was slow and it did not hurt her. The slow moving men rushed to her as her helmet was forcefully taken off by invisible hands, but when they reached her it was already too late. They found her on her back, frozen dead, and on her lips, the shape of a blue, glittery kiss laid there forever, crystallised like her body. Ironic, for that would have been the perfect subject for her story.
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