The Blob: A Gala Fundraiser at the Lafitte Cinema

My mother and I will be going to a gala fundraiser showing of the Blob tonight in Abbeville. I recently went with my sister and her children to the Cafe du Monde for cafe au lait and beignets, walked around Jackson Square, went to the Aquarium of the Americas and to the New Orleans City Park as well as a ferry trip to Gretna and back across the Father of Rivers from the French Quarter. That day was a new experience that was full of reminders of old experiences. I treasured the time Sarah, Alyse, Anika, Soren and I spent doing those things.

Tonight will be an experience closer to home and celebrating things that are closer to home. The funds raised will be to the benefit of a scoirty preserving the Frank’s Theater which is where a key scene in The Blob was made. This historic cinema also premiered the Flaherty classic Louisiana Story which among other credits has a Pulitzer Prize  winning score and soundtrack. The Blob was made in Abbeville ( in large part) in 1988 and I worked on the production as a gun-toting white-suited extra. Watching it now almost 23 years later in this context will be fun I hope.
Despite my often dismal point of view there is a pattern of recycling and enhancing patterns of past joys which has stood me in good stead in life.

I don’t know if there are tickets still available but anyone wishing to get tickets for tonight November 17, 2010 at 7:30 may be able to get them online by going to the Lafitte website, clicking on Showtimes, clicking onthe Buy Tickets button next to The  Blob and then following directions: http://www.abbevillemovies.com/index.asp

Fourth Chapter of the online novel…

Chapter Four ” A Day’s Work” in Part One “The Moon” of a Science Fiction Novel in Progress

by Summers Progress on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 8:41pm
Roberta Dupuis felt physicaly sore from lovemaking. Her inner passages and her lower back muscles. Her relationship with Joseph was much what she might have expected if she had taken a twenty-year-old First Class danger miner as a lover. She was not complaining. Physical lovemaking  had been less in recent years than she would have liked. Partly she had achieved those associations which men find a bit physically intimidating. She both knew and had spent a weekend with the man who was now Lunar UN High Commissioner and Vice Secretary. She was barely more than a cordial stranger with him now but she was able to drop names and mention events that cooled the hottest fires she had known to some degree. There were less  hot forms of sex but they were not Joseph’s. It was clear to her that he had a well-earned deposit of self-respect, courage and intensity that he found did not pale compared to any man. In addition he was completely reconciled with sexual desire. The wanting that flowed through him consumed him completely at the time and yet was under technical control and left no sign of serious injury to the mind or sensibility. She had a knack for putting things out of mind at work and she knew that she must try. Joseph would let her feel no shame about their shared excess of passion and so she knew she would see him again for these weeks and she could not lose her job.

She really did quite a variety of jobs in her network and one was a monthly magazine style show she edited, produced and was principal reporter for each month. This month as always she did the main story herself and it was titled “Water and Population: Lunar Limits“.

She had a holocube appointment with the Governor-Mayor of Chandraayan the Capital of India’s  Lunar Colonial Sector.  While the units were linking together she began a recorded greeting and set-up that she could then edit and overlay at will. “Tonight I am your host Roberta Dupuis and I will Speaking with His Triple Excellency Ganesh Mullanghmalangalam Governor-Mayor of the Indian Lunar Capital city-colony of Chandraayan just southeast of the Oceanus Procellarum in the Sirsalis Crater. Later we will have His Triple Excellency respond to comments by others with similar responsibilities but because of his work with water law abd the water industry I chose to start with him alone”. The hologramatic Indian was now fully present and she spoke to him, “Welcome Governor-Mayor”.

“Glad to be here Roberta”.

“So tell us about you water projects briefly if you can”.

“Well I lead a group of political and industry leaders on the Moon who think the water treaty needs to be improved now that asteroid ice mining and comet ice gathering  are really becoming going concerns. Simply, we need to create incentives and a structure to bring in much more water”.

“What do you propose”?

“Well,  First, a real integration of all governing atuthorities into a Lunar Water Exchange Board. Secondly,  a real cap and trade rquirement that for every kilogram of material shipped off the Moon for any purpose someone is bound to add a kilogram of nonterrestrial water”.

“So, Governor-Mayor, with other imports would that lead to the Moon gaining mass over time”?

” Yes, it would but it would be many centuries before it became an issue we needed to address if ever”?

“You said in your book Wet Work that overall our water purity and reclamation regime is doing passably well.  owever you gave our gross water strategy a failing grade — is that still how you feel”? 

” Indeed I do Roberta. I think the most important assurance we need is that as more ships are built on the moon they are not being sold with tanks full of water from Lunar ice mines. If we allow population to increase and ground water to decrease we are in effect murdering our own progeny as quickly as we can”.

The interview went fairly well and Roberta called several contacts at various shipyards and started asking questions and making appointments. In the middle of her work an expensive flower arrangement arrived. She smiled as she read the simple card — “To Roberta, Love Joseph”. She sent him an e-tab thanks and placed her flowers  where she would see them most often. He was certianly very romantic.

She did an interview for the same show later with High Chief Knifeweather, Governor of Aboriginal Americans Capital Cap Colony in the Sinus Armoris subregion of the of the Mare Serenitatis American Protectorate Sector. The colony was in the Maraldi Crater that  rested in those twisted lands. Here Native Hawaiians, Samoans, Chamorros and members of every registered US Indian Nation had been given a share of a single crater cap colony under a single government as a sign of good faith. It so happened that huge deposits of uranium had been found there.  TheHigh Chief spoke of the law they had made there, “We have agreed that for every pound of uranium we sell to the US government or an approved purchser we must first receive payment in kind of a kilogram of non terrestrial and nonlunar water, another kilogram of certified compost, another kilogram of healthy living vegetable matter and a final kilogram of Lunar water. Then we calculate the market value of all these products and take only the remainder in credits, coin or cash. We have the purest and richest uranium ore ever found so the remainder is still pretty much. But we demand delivery of these things to our colony itself in order to do business”.  

The chief was rather taciturn and the interview as brief but she felt that it was fairly successful.  Before the workday was over her piece she bet would be starting to take shape.

When she finished the basic bulk of the work of any average morning she had learned to leave a few minutes free for miscellaneous research. She had touched her e-tab with Joseph’s e-tab  and because he had it set on a friendly setting it gave her a list of the associations, guilds and organizations to which he maintained a public link. Before stopping for lunch she joined and associated herself with some of these and went to public sites offered by others of these groups.

One group she found he belonged to was the Culkathadreil Charitable Coastal Conservancy and she sent in her ten e-credits for a basic membership. She saw that two corporate patrons of the Conservancy were the Etnos Arkadios Corporation and the Summers Foundation and that these institutions had directors on one anothers boards as well.  Further Joseph had some kind of membership in an auxillary of each group. The Summers Foundation was open to the public so she joined it as a basic member for ten e-credits. Then she researched some of its interactions with Culathadreils and found a long list. Another long list greeted her as she dealt with the interactions with the Ethnos Arkadios Corporation. Finally she came to an entry that began to give her a picture of things:

“The Summers Foundation  was established in 2110 as a consolidation various entities after the Disolution Settlement that formally ended the Arcadian Renewal Movement. A best date for the start of the movement is June 15, 2025 which was our namesake’s sixty first birthday and began the Worldwide Series of Skirmishes. The work building up to this failed effort at reform goes back thoroughout the life of our namesake and its roots are described by him in a brief post from early in the twenty-first century reproduced below:

Franksummers3ba’s Blog

Just another WordPress.com weblog

<!– #masthead –>An Acadian Moment

Posted on September 2, 2010 by franksummers3ba

The following timeline is from memory and tapped out quickly. It leaves out far more than it includes.  Nonetheless, in this blog I often argue that we may have reached an Acadian moment in American history. Therefore, I want to give some idea of where that moment would fall in our history.

1600ish Project of founding Acadie begins in Western France.

1755 Le Grand Derangement peaks with exiles from Grand Pre area as the Brits drive out the “French Neutrals”  and burn, confiscate  or destroy almost all their possessions.

1785 Joseph Broussard Dit Beausoleil  and his company receive near state statue from the Spanish Empire on the Atakapas Prairie. Connections well established with Olivier Theriot’s Acadian Colony in East Louisiana.

 Very Early 1800s Acadians deal with numerous transitions including the Louisiana Purchase, some fight at Battle of New Orleans, Louisiana becomes a State of the United States.

1850s Tensions build toward the Civil War. Acadian Governor Mouton prominent in crisis. Comite de Vigilance des Atakapas founded.  

1860s French Prince Camille de Polignac fights in Acadiana as a Confederate general. Acadian Confederate General Mouton dies in a smaller Civil War battle in part from complications caused by new wounds affecting wounds received at Shiloh. The Confederacy loses the war.

1881 5000 or so Acadians gather for the first National Convention intended to represent the whole people publicly since the exile. August 15, Feast of the Assumption is named national Acadian holiday.

1938 the Pope recognizes Feast of Assumption as Acadian holiday.

1940s through 1950s Dudley Leblanc leads a high  profile movement of activism, study and international committees.

1960s Acadian music, festivals and crafts better organized in Louisiana. Sometimes call the start of an Acadian Renaissance.

1980s Congres  Mondial makes strong steps to restore national union of family associations.

2003 Her Britannic Majesty Elizabeth Queen of Scotland and of England Second of the Name issues a proclamation regarding the Acadians and Le Grand Derangement.

To see a bit more go to my glossary:     https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/acadian-forum-archive/glossary-of-terms-casually-defined/

The Culkathadreil Clan in the largest sense included several thousand people at least. Apparently they were scattered in pockets around the world.  However, the largest was the population associated with that name in Louisiana. There they intermmarried with and established relationships more with the Acadians than anyone else. They had four official Louisiana Ethnic Liasons in the Culkathadreil Clan that were listed in the Clan Association Archive. One was to the Germans of the Cote des Allemans, one was to the White Creoles of the  Five Parishes and one was to the Acadians. She found photographs of Joseph at an important dinner or two with each of these Liasons in the Louisiana Newspapers Society Pages website.   There was a whole network here she really did not understand. And yet she knew  that she had ancestors from the region.  She would not pry. Joseph would talk as he wished and over time she would learn more.

 ***   *****     *****     *****     ******   ****  

As soon as he got off the phone with the front desk  and verified the placement of an earlier flower order Joseph began to look around for the gift left for him by his family network. He knew it was not in plain sight, in the bedclothes or in the shower curtain. So he tried his half empty valise. As soon as he lifted it he knew he had picked the right location. There was a bag with a wax seal bearing the Culkathadreil Signet crest. He broke the seal and examined the contents. there were two data disks, a proteinate polymer gun and 500 microtips to load its 50 shot magazine. There was a superburst transceiver built into a working space mask. There was also a 12 hour one use spacewalk pressure suit. There was finally a small set of familiar pills that the ranking members of the family usually carried but he had exhausted. One would turn his skin (or anyone else’s) much darker for two weeks, one would allowthe taker to survive large exposure to radiation if taken quickly and followed by treatment, a third would boost his speed, strength and metabolism and the last would kill him fairly painlessly in three hours unless an antidote he did not have was administered by a family medic.

He loaded the gun and placed it on his abdomen where it adhered instantly on its own. He let his shirt fall over the ver small gun and was satisfied. The middle of his well muscled lower back would be even better but this would do for now. He grabbed his e-tablet from the table near his computer station and put in the green disk he knew from the color that it would erase itself soon or destroy itself after being read. He activated the the disk and saw the redhaired woman and a distant cousin he knew as Melvin but some called Baron de Zargos. They were seated in a room overlooking Atlanta Georgia on Earth.

“Joseph, I hope you are well. The contest you won was not rigged but we entered your name as our bid on five contests numerous times. The Armstrong Agency is using an unusual route to mothball the Neil Armstrong. On the screen now you can see the route taken by the Neil Armstong II Supercruiser. You can also see the route taken Aldrin Corporation’s BuzzBeast Freighter. Now you will see your own projected route. Why is this being done?”

Now the redhaired woman stood up and pressed a button. She then spoke, “The screen you are watching now shows a totally unkown anomaly. A series of lines appear in sequence emmiting gravity and electromagnetic waves for no known reason. The pattern predicts that these lines will appear again during your journey. They have always been about ten times stronger than the previous time. It could be a wormhole opening up through space-time but that is a fairly wild guess. It is the only one we have not been able to disprove beyond 99% probability by our own estimate. We also believe that the Asteroid Belt Pirate Syndicate is communicating about and somehow with this phenomenon. To tell you more could mostly mislead you. We know you are busy.”

The screen showed “ERase and diSoLvE” cyciling through fonts and cases. He ejected the disk and threw it into the air. It gave off flash of light and a puff of smoke and turned into a real tourist holodisk showing an image of the Grand Central Spaceport. He left it by the computer and hurried out to make his appointments. He saw a variety of crater cap engineers and some were wearing the distinctive uniform of the Summers Foundation. He smiled at one them and gave a sort of half wave.

He found the elevator behind the great waterfall to be another visually stunning sight. The directions he had gotten to the Armstrong Agency were very good directions and he arrived on time. He saw directions to Olympiaville where all the sports facilities on the floor of the crater were located. He noted the bus schedules and a few scheduled events and hoped that he and Roberta could make it out there during his stay in Lunapolis. He also hoped that he might make a connection with Daniel and they might make it out there. However, at the moment it was clear that his priority was to hurry through the Market Street crowds between Mouton’s Market West and Mouton’s Market East. He took in the smells of fish, herbs, dried fruits, nuts and spices. His eyes saw butcher shops with chicken, pork and a few with beef. There were stands with ceramics and those with used space gear. The merchants were mostly locals and the shoppers were mostly people from other colonies on the Moon he sensed — but only a bit over half. Many were locals shopping for their restaurants and convenience stores on the walls of the crater. The further he got down Market Street the more clearly he could see the large red building behind the markets.

There was a fountain in slabs of stone and the stone formed a sort of plaza with a handful of large potted plants. There were several metal statues in the plaza that Joseph recgnized as the work of Jean Claude Bazerac. Bazerac was a French sculptor who had actualy done a small bust of Joseph’s father when he had been a struggling young artist. Joseph greatly admired his work and was amazed to see so many examples of it here on the moon. Bazerac had just recenly died and that had brought him to the forefront of Joseph’s mind.Then he had seen that in the Church of the Holy Magi there were two pieces by Bazerac. One was a bas relief of the Holy Family and the other was a scene of the Magitic interpretation of Jesus walking on the water. Bazerac he suddenly remembered had lived for a few years in Lunapolis as the Artist-in-Residence employed by the Lunapolis Government.

As he entered the plaza proper one of the nearest statues moved towards him and bowed slightly its ten foot height. While the face moved very litlle the voice coming from the mouth sounded quite natural.

“Welcome Mr. Culkathadreil, you are awaited in the Crew Conference Hall. Follow me please.”

Joseph was a litttle stunned. He felt the blood flush in his cheeks and the widening of his eyes. He was sure that Balzerac had fashioned these bodies from the metal mined on the Moon and they were fitted around the best functioning androids he had ever seen. Clearly this was a chance for the Armstrong Agency to display their skill and expertise in robotics. How rich were these people?

His thoughts went back to Bazerac though. He had only been married to Louise for six years. Four of those he spent in two colleges. He had already been to Technical school and become a shutle pilot who never commanded a ship becuse of his inferior education. Then he took the chance for three months of Officer Candidacy School and a Two month flight school for aircraft. After fighting in the US Army as an ornithopter pilot against the Central Asian Islamic Comity’s forces he had used his GI benefits to go to school. He had the rarest of double majors. He majored in aerospace business and interior design. Horribly Louise died in childbirth because CAIC guerillas shelled the hospital and nearby power plant. They were inserted by Scandinavian pirates into a series of freight shipments. A Bazerac figurine was by her bedside when she went into labor.There were electic shocks that flowed through the New Orleans Touro & Superior Hospital. His baby son Benjamin died a few days later. He took the figurine with him when he was crewing the stasis dreamliner to the Orbital array around Jupiter. When he got back he married Louise’s cousin Elsie Charlotte Didier much younger than he. They had lived together as he coached rugby at his old junior college. After five years they divorced without children and he gave her the Bazerac figurine because Louise had cared about her young cousin who had also been nearby when his first wife died.

He had used all his elective programming on the dreamliner for psychotherapy protocols. While he often used Bazerac in his academic interior designs the man’s work had become a symbol of great pain. Now he was following the work of his favorite and also least favorite sculptor into the place where he would become a crewman and officer on his next deep space journey. These thoughts carried him through the colonade and into the tall and stately doors of the building, Inside the lobby giant fountains of gold, silver and bronze burbled and splashed. Three real living lionesses and a real lion wearing gold studded neuromatch collars languished on the rich carpets.The ceiling of the room was thirty meters high, athin webwork of steel, silver and amalgam was embedded into the ceiling, walls and floors. Crew Conference Hall was etched into a large slab above bronze door and between stone columns. He followed the stately robot through the door and was greeted by a man the robot introduced as “Chief Agent Saul Rojas Netanyahu”. The rather heavy man greeted him with, “Really Grand you won there Culkathadreil — Really Grand.”

The hall was a bit less overblown than the lobby. However, there was a mosaic on the wall of the Neil Armstrong with the Moon in the background. The huge room was an elongated rectangle with the lobby entrance in the middle of one of the long sides. The only other doors wre locate in the opposite long side but were not directly across from the lobby entry. Instead each was about a third of the way in from eith of that walls corners. they were wide enough that he could see a bit into them but eah was hung with double doors that swung into the next room and he could mostly see those door panels. The short wall to his right was lined with obvious one person holospace simulators he noted that five of them fit and took up almost all the space. The small wall on the otherside was equally filled by ten computer workstations. In both cases there was good bit of space between thes entry side of the aparatus nearest the wal and the place where the door stood in the long wall. It was a huge room. Between the two doors were about 30 highback chairs with the tops of their backs just below the bottom of the mosaic. This all takes a while to write but took Joseph a split second to observe.

“Well, I assure you it is grand to be here — fantastic really. I am impressed to see such fascinating people and robots here. I hope these are mostly my fellow members of the Armstrong Complement.”

“Quite right they are. Grand people Culkathadreil. We brought in the seven contest winners today as well as some of the people who might be working most closely with each of you. Now most of the inners are individuals but one of the winners is a group. That is the group of lovely young ladies in the softball uniforms.”

Joseph smiled at the large groups standing about just inside the door. “I am pleased to meet all of you. Hopefully we’ll be properly introduced soon.”

It turned out that servodroids with trays of drinks and treats were moving around as well as several fairly famous human photographers. The first part of this first day was about introductions and photographs of various kind. There were twenty four members of the Armstrong High School Strongarmers Softball Team. The Captain was a very shapely seventeen year old pitcher with the look of a practiced athlete in her eyes. He also met the co-subcaptains Anabella Rodriguez and Anais Durand. Anabella played first base and Anais was a catcher. He was friendly to these girls and took several posed and candid pictures involving one or more of them.

He met Harriet Bliss who had won a berth by winning the award for Lunapolis Physician of the Year. She was a flirtatious recently divorced redhead. She was meeting with the man who would be her direct subordinate as she was the New Ship’s Medical Officer. He was of real interest to Joseph who had some varied knowledg of medicine. He held eight acredited allied health licenses. Thus he was certified as a Nutritionist, AutoDoc Technician, Physician’s Assistant, Vedic Medical Practitioner, Sports Medic, Herbalist, Massage Therapist and Accupuncturist. There were more pictures and introductions. The old Ship’s Physician and Medical Officer was a man named Bloomfield but although he was present his aged appearance made it easy to see why he was not going on this trip.

There were two winners of security contests. These men were named Dick Smith and Harry Jones and assured him that those were not cover names. These were meeting with the regular security officers Wang Li Cheng, Bob Dirkson and Ivan Kaspersian. He knew he ha been entered for these slots by the Culkathadreil machine and wondered how different that win might have been. The group were still sizing eachother up and trying not to show it too much. There was alternating silence and excessive laughter.

The two winners in the Aerospace Technology also had slots he might have won. One was a young woman named Cynthia Blair and the other was an amazingly tall black man named Kweisei Hanzu. They were there with several regular techs whose names he missed and with a bright eyed engineering officer named Henry Enrique Ramirez. When they shook hands Joseph felt a familiar rhythym of pressures in the man’s fingers. He was another member of the network called the Culkathadreil Clan. Joseph returned a suitable signal.

After photographs and introductions they all watched a two hour orientation film. They had lunch and sat in a two hour Holoshow as a group. After this each winner went into Evaluator and Bio-accelerator. When they got out they were given Dreamlearner enhancement disks and told to show up at the same time the next day. The softball team would only come for two days but the other winners would be in training for two five day weeks.

As Joseph was waiting to process out he met Alan Germany the white coated trainer in chief. The man introduced himself almost deferentialy. “Just come in at this time and plan to leave at five. You can be a tourist whenever you are not here or in the Dreamlearner, the Dreamlearner will handle the homework with you. There will not be banquets and photo opportunities everyday so we will get a lot done.”

“Well, I plan to be here on time and ready.”

“I am sure you will be. Your piloting aptitudes are far above the minmum. But I did notice something. Your combat aptitude is the highest ever recorded in our machines and we have tested some very fine security officers here. Are you sure you have the right job?”

“Yes I am sure.”

“Well would you accept a bonus to serve as Bridge security liaison? We are running short crewed you know.”

” How much for how much?”

“Ten thousand dollars up front and fifty thousand upon arrival at Mars. You will move from thrity official duty hours to forty two per week. You will be relieved of some routine duties and have more high responsibility hours.”

“I accept.”

“Very well, sign this e-tablet and the money will be in your account in five minutes.”

“Good enough. I would like to keep the score kind of need to know though. Is that possible.”

“That is policy!”

Joseph smiled and gave his half wave. He wondered to himself how it happened that he as a pilot had not met the Ships Commander and High Captain or any of the other pilots. He just had to go with the flow on some of these things. He could not afford to cause to o much trouble or attract to much attention.

Early twentieth century Acadian scene from a Regina Oubre Hollier painting on Summers Foundation website.

 

November 16,2010: An Unusual Day

This has been an unusual day. Here are some for instances of why:

1. Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement.

2.The Beatles and Apple reached an agreement to put the Beatles catalogue on I-Tunes for download.

3. Ground was broken on the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Center on SMU’s campus in Dallas.

4. President Obama bestowed the Medal of Honor on the first living recipient since the 1970s.

5. My siblings, their spouses and my nieces and nephews all celebrated my mother’s birthday with her belatedly ( not all together but all in two groups)   as she had just gotten back from a trip.

Third Chapter of my online novel: includes human flight…

Chapter Three “Life Beneath the Caps” in Part Two “The Moon” of a Science Fiction Novel in Progress

by Summers Progress on Monday, November 15, 2010 at 2:45pm
Your changes have been saved.

After saying goodbye to Roberta, Joseph opened his luggage case and then dropped the folding empty outer rental case into a chute in his closet. He opened his leather valise and put on some of his favorite comfortable and casual clothes. He ran a quick comb and brush through the hair he wore longer than ususal these days. He noticed the small but fresh burn mark just below his right ear. It joined more scars than he could count of various ages across his body.

Then he walked across the thick luxurious carpet of the suite to his computer workstation. To maximize the effectiveness of everything he would do he inserted the e-tab he had just won into the tablet port on the console. He linked to the Contest Committee and dowloaded all of the orientation package. He first took a virtual tour of the vast Neil Armstrong Super Cruiser. Then he took a virtual tour of Museum Port in the New Array where it was to be mothballed. He finished the coffee in his inroom coffee machine while he was making the virtual trip from the Moon to Mars a 10,000 times actual speed. He was hungry and his neck hurt him. Roberta had left at about 2:45 local time and it was now 7:30. He had hardly moved. He used his personal credit card to send Roberta flowers at work that night and sent all his link information to the Armstrong Agency. He then connected his console to the Dreamlearner set on his bed. He would leave it all set up to download some Dreamlearner programming from Armstrong while he went out.

A few minutes later he was in a hovercab setting out under the artificial stars of an artificial night. “Where to Sir?”

“The Church of the Holy Magi.”

“Rimville it is.”

The trip was uneventful, he did notice tiny lights moving between the heavy lanes of traffic in the mass of air. “Those little lights that fly all over but stay out of the main airlanes and are not the cablecars traveling the wires from the plug — are they the birders I saw during the day?”

“Sure are. Anyone can go birding during the day but you have to have a special license to go at night.”

“I hope to do that while I am here in Lunapolis. Go Birding I mean. I am a pilot but I may not get around to night flying.”

“Don’t miss birding man. I go once a week if I can. I bring the wife and kids at least once a month.”

“Pretty exciting I guess?”

“It is not just exciting. It is the fact that you own body is powering itself and maneuvering itself like a bird. It changes you somehow.”

“I will definitely have to try that.”

“Listen to get a cab out of Rimville you can take the hub bus to the great balcony or you can just text my license number to Lunapolis Taxi and I will pick you up at the church. As long as you are ready by 2:00 that is when I get off.”

“I should be ready well before that. I thought I would go to the Church and see it, maybe catch the late service and then I would get some food somewhere and visit the Military Grottoes. How long should that take?”

“I think I will hope to hear from you between 10:30 and midnight.”

“That sounds good then.”

The hovercab dove through the breach doorway on the great balcony at almost full speed and then slowed. It landed on one of the many streets that ranbetween the massive foundations, anchors and machines which were part of the infrastructure for maintaining the colony’s crater cap. There were lot of streets in Rimville lined with trees and big houses with lawns were set in the blocks that made up most of the spaces between the huge iron pilings, copper tubes and lead blocks. The hovercab had drawn all its wings in as close to the body of the car as they could be drawn and it was now moving along the streets on its six land wheels. A motor powered the wheels but the jets still provided rapid acceleration when needed. This jet boost blew up lots of loose leaves that had gotten near the streets. There was fairly heavy traffic. Joseph swiped his credit card and got out in front of the church. Stylized almost geometric statues of three wise men looking at a star of lucite and gold above the door stood in a small rock garden and near a pond. Parishoners had to navigate through this little tableau to get to the entry steps.

Joseph go to the steps and stopped at the top to read a sign. The sign was brass and the letters raised. It was lit by two arclights.

The sign read:

The Church of the Holy Magi is the oldest full time and free-standing house of worship on the Moon. The long secret rite of Magitic Levantine Christians was recognized as an official Eastern Rite of the Roman Catholic Church in 2087. This was the third church dedicated under the first public Archmandrake sometimes called Paphnutius XXX and sometimes Paphnutius I. The other two Churches were on Earth. All three were paid for in large part by a donation from Chief Basil Zargos-Culkathadreil. Masses are offered for his soul and family twice every Saturday at this altar.”

Joseph did catch a late mass. He sat in the back and did not go to communion. But after services he met the priest and introduced himself. He gave the priest a personal calling card with his hotel address scribbled on the back. He asked about his cousin Daniel.

“Yes, he comes to church here sometimes — even often. But he is not here most weeks. I think he is working for one of the astronomy companies as a maintenance tech so he spend a lot of time on the surface.”

“Well, if you see him please give him my number and if you hear anything call me.”

“I certainly will. But you have been on television a great deal today. I am sure word will reach him soon enough.”

“Well, I am only in Lunapolis for two weeks.”

“Right, I will do what I can.”

Joseph took out his e-tab and activated the camera function. He had decided to take some video of the Church as he had of the fountain and  some other views. He wanted to put together a documentary for friends and family of his first trip to the Moon and a possible keepsake album on video for himself and his possible new girlfriend. He shot the ceiling which in a Levantine and Magitic Church showed the traditional contellations of several cultures surrounding the divine eye in a Star of David which had one traingle made of fire interlocking with another made of ice. Then he shot the San Damiano style painted Crucifix and the altar of arrivals and the altar of departures as well as the High Altar but he did not take long over doing those things.  Some things were typical of all churches of his write like the huge illustrated gold covered bibleand others were unique to this church. Then he came across something really unique. It was a plaque of tribute:

  • We want to pay tribute to the several chaplains who served in meeting halls and dorms and open floor areas of various kinds before Lunapolis was founded. There names appear in the frame of this plaque.As the first regular house of worship on the Moon we recognize them. However, we more emphatically want to recognizr Dr. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin who celebrated the Eucharisitc rites of his Protestant Christian Communion on the very first trip of humanity to the Moon’s surface. Although we have theological differences which are important his effort to honor the memory of Jesus Christ in that way is precious and sacred to us.

 Joseph had forgotten that there was a Eucharistic service on the Apollo voyage made byArmstrong, Aldrin and Collins. Remebering that made him feel uncertain about having missed the chance to receive communion. But he was now in a hurry so he turned offf the camera function in his e-tab and hurried out of the church.

Joseph grabbed a shrimp salad and and a beer at a small cafe and the rented a glidecycle and saw the grottoes. In the Hall of Honor he used their Moon Map Simulator. He saw the Amalgamated Region of  US Zones with Lunapolis as its capital and the several United Nations zones including the one  that took in most of Mare Insularum and included the very uncapped Crater Copernicus with its  many tunnel gates and towers and miles of solar collectors connected to it by armored conduits for this was  where  The Grand Central Spaceport was situated. He saw the zones assigned to each country on Earth and the corporate and royal microstates, some were pople he knew vaguely Prince Thurn und Taxis was a real Head of State here with a royal charter colony with a colony named simply Thurn und Taxis that was built in Gruithuisen Crater on the edge of Mare Imbrium near the  end of the broken lands where the Promontorium Heraclides marked the end of the Montes Jura.  He and the Prince had gotten drunk together once at a mutual friends bachelor party. Because his wristband was unreliable here he used a wall phone to send a message to Lunapolis Taxi and then took his glidecycle back toward the church to turn in for his deposit near the cafe. Just as he finished his cab arrived and in short order brought him back to the Valley View Hotel. One of the most interesting aspects of the Moon Map Simulator is that it showed video of the three crater cap outposts which came before the first crater that was classed as a colony. The first was fifty yards in diameter, the second a hundred yards and the third was three hundred yards.It was in these outposts that the basic skills of crater capping had been developed and made the development of the Moon as a whole.

 It was about one when he got to his room. The Dreamliner was fully prepped. After he went to the bathroom to ready himself for the night he lay in bed and put on the mask, the socks and the half gloves. Then he peeled a fresh chestpad and stuck it to his chest. He fell quickly into a deep sleep.

Then he began his training to pilot the Armstrong while he slept.

Joseph woke at nine. He removed his Dreamlearner equipment and took a bath, soaking the strane lunar bubbles and waves of the familiar whirlpool. He got out of the tub and put on his athletic gear. He folded out the room’s exercycle near the computer station. Then he put on the televisor and picked up his e-tablet. He booked the first available birding lessons and flight sessions. He had a coupon for just this much birding that came with this suite. He scheduled the lessons while Roberta was working but the birding itself he shduked just in time for her to get there. He had just deposited his most recent severance payment from the Catapult company in the morning’s transactions. He used most of this money just for Roberta’s flight and suit rental. Then he firmed up dinner reservations at the hotel. He did all this while watching television quarter screen. There were several versions of his interview with Roberta on the air. He got her acceptance for the birding by text and a thanks for the flowers. Happily he redeemed his coupon for a walking tour leaving the Hotel and taking Insane Lane to the Birding Aerie and back. He simply would remain there and not come back with the tour. He and Roberta would come back in her car.

Joseph rushed down to the lobby and barely got to his tour group in time. Almost all were Americans in this group anyway. The couple next to him were from that part of Wyoming where some of his relatives had a ranch and he recognized the intonations and accents of the region right away. Two apparent brothers had on Red Sox hoodies he would have found warm and so he wondered how the Yankees could be enjoying them. A tall light-skinned black man with what he thought was the pronunciation patterning and manner of one of Louisiana’s Creoles of Color was asking the clearly Afro-Lunarian guide how long Insane Lane had been called by that name. The guide picked up a set of magnetic shoe meshes and answered the question.

” The settlers who built the Lane called it Insane Lane. The path is magnetized now and everyone on this tour must wear magnetized shoe meshes. there are also magnets catch points below the path. In addition birders at the aerie run a rescue service and will swoop down to rescue those falling from the path. Further every walker will be tied to two other walkers and a flybot except for the guides. On the way back some of you will stay to do some birding and if necessary guides will tie up to make up threesomes for the return trip. Now does everyone have the meshes Bob has been handing out?”

The guide was looking over his group and checking the faces of other guides. He nodded finally. ” We will be taking this shuttle bus outside to the Pond Piers over the falls. We will have a good look at the wall nests of a very large colony of parrots which have adapted to our cooler climate along with everything else they have to adapt to here. We have five days of freeze per year in Lunapolis and when we do the falls are heated to allow animals and birds who need warmth to avoid the cold. That is what these parrots do along with many others. They come near the falls. But right now they are just enjoying their normal roost.”

In the shuttle a very attractive redhaired Earth woman and her bronzed Earth husband sat in the two seats beside him. The woman had several rings on her fingers. She turned one in front of him so that he could see the small Culkathadreil Coat of arms etched on it. He felt unexpected speed as the shuttle left the hotel. He showed the woman the cooat of arms etched small on his wristwatch. She signed to him with her fingers in a code he knew well.

“Fire is Known.”

“I promised secrecy.” He signed back.

The woman gave the general sign of respect for a memeber of the House or Clan Culkathadreil who had a very much higher rank than oneself. The same sign could sometimes translate “Your Grace”,Your Highness” or any of a number of other honorifics. However, Joseph noted that it all very properly done. ” We know you had to kill the arsonists. One was an Assasin also.”

“I had to resign.”

“Armstong Agency has secrets. Check your route and be careful. We will leave special supplies in your room tonight.”

“What do you want?”

“Only to warn you. Armstrong Agency are not the pirates but they also study them and do not tell us anything. Those loyal to your family are also on the ship to Mars.”

The old signs were slow and laborious and he did have to see the parrots for cover. They were quite beautiful too. The trip was over and they were getting out once this information had been exchanged. When they got off the bus he and the woman were careful to take no interest in one another and to end up in separate threes. He thought he might have seen her however, perhaps at his Father the Grand Duke and Vice-Chieftain’s funeral. That would have been almost eleven years ago and her breasts had been a different apparent size, she had been single and her eyes had been one blue and one green not the two nearly violet globes he saw now but  he knew she was the one who played the violin for the funeral mass and then come to his mother’s reception — they had talked. He had not seen her before and now would not, in all likelihood, see her again. 

The path or lane was really terrifying for many. It was a foot wide and overlooked a drop of hundreds of meters in many places. But the views were spectacular and the whole tour made it to the birding aerie with no major incidents. Once there they could see that most had come by hovercar.

Saying goodbye to his tour Joseph went to the building with a large sign that read “Training”. He was greeted by enought different people to get confused and was fitted with a birding suit and then had most of it removed again. He and half a dozen other classmates had to identify the parts by repeating after the instructor. “Forewings” “forewings!”

The forewings had an unusual slope or camber that set up a rise in an odd shape to the front and then across the middle that allowed for varied angles of attack that still produced lift but were all the harder to predict for their unusual shape. They also had two lines of memory ports that acted as the feather assembly on a bird’s wing acts. When the wings pushed air down and back the ports locked and the wings created thrust as well as lift. But on the return strokes when the wings pulled forward the memory ports opened and the wings offered little resistance to the air but their unusual shape allowed them to catch a little redirected lift even on those strokes.

“Midwings…” “midwings!” He yelled out with the rest and noticed that these midwings were really hollow shaped airfoils of the type he knews best – “the smeared pyramid line” a buddy called it. There was none of the complexity of memory ports on these wings. They did not beat and only cut through the air like a hang glider. They had a much smaller area than an Earthly hang glider would need however to do this job.  

“Aftwings…” “aftwings!” The aftwings were bifurcated air foils and with two they were quadrufurcated airfoils. The complexity was getting mind boggling. These had the battery chargers and a system of webbing that gathered every random pressure and tension into ennergy to power a helmet jet and instruments and they had a kind of automatic compensating beating device. They beat four times fro each stroke delivered by humn muscle to their master joint. They were almost entirely covered wtih memory ports that allowed them to push back and down and cut easily on the return.  He could not really picture the whole function but he could see that they worked. He called out with the rest.

“Power tails” “Power tails” This assemblage connected to a kind of inflated body cast. A small  standard air foil was held out beyond the main tail and had air driven across it. Another traditional airfoil wing was above it near the top and had small rudder like blades on it. However the tails themselves were covered with memory ports. pushing air back and down in a single wall they opened like a sieve on the return stroke. He repeated the name of the component with the other students.

At this point Roberta showed up to meet him. They touched hands and smiled and she joined in a sort of simultaneous refresher course where she was partly with him while he went through the first-timer’s course. She had  been birding about twelve times and this helped to even out their skill sense he was a highly trained pilot and a really gifted athlete. The suits without wings were hooked up to wires, hooks, cables and sensors. The students were hoisted into the air in in a large room surrounded with screens and holoshow projectors. Even Joseph had one simulated crash. the other newcomers had more than a couple. The three refreshers had what might be called severe wobbles as they got reaquainted with the suits but did not crash. Roberta’s wobble was the least severe of the three who had birded before and she really looked at ease after that initial reminder. But all those in the class grasped the basics and  within a half hour they were flying. Then the wings were put on and they were suspended from a leader cable-arm and a tether by arms running on a rail. Soon they all displayed some grace and control. The arms ran five times around an oval track and the lessons were finished. He walked out wearing his suit with diassembled wings just in time to see that Roberta’s refresher course had actually eneded much sooner and she was waiting for him having got them each an energy soda. He  gave her a kiss on the cheek.

They were both helped into the real rental suits  for flying out in the world (which had alalrm beacons, medikits and automatic traffic lights on the soles of the feet, the gloves and the tops of the shoulders. They had these suits quickly tested and then both had their wings properly installed and they took to the air. A rigid helium filled baloon ran as a tube from mid back between the waists and shoulder blades to a spot rigidly supported almost a meter behind and exactly two old fashioned American feet above the birder’s feet. There was a sort of tentlike structure of three large almost soft and yet rigid cloth panels covered with memory ports that went over this tube and connected with both feet there was a fine webbing that readjusted automatically to get the best angle of attack. One or the other side panel could beat alone or elese the whol three fold desin could beat like a wing as the microcomputer responded to pressure readings on the fabric and the machanical design responded to the birder. This was the powertail.

 Another wing called the aftwing ran from the rib cage all along the outside of the legs and then portruded another  two meters out and a few inches behind each foot. here a boot had gyroscopes and beater arms to synchronize three follow up beats for every muscled beat. The memory ports guaranteed thrust and brute lift while the angled shape added to the general lift like a second wing on a biplane. These were the aftwings.

 Overlapping these about inch in back or above started the very flexible midwings which ended up secured to the outside of each wrist. It would seem that the arms would be used for flapping but the legs were more powerful and the wrists in their odd “loops of control” assemblies could bend the mid wings for all kinds of direction. The midwings had pull-out airfoils sections near each wrist which somehow merged back into the main perfectly every time but could allow cool effects and more hand freedom when needed. No memory ports confused this graceful Earthly design.

The last set of wings were the forewings with complex bumping arifoil shapes and limited memory ports in the  portion pointing out sharply from the back and a  few more clustered in the large graceful front section that went out like the tops of large angel wings above and behind the head. The fronts of the forewings were joined to eachother and both the birders hands with a very flexible and springy square of rods. Then each birder had a helmet with rudder and a small built-in jet. Working together the suits were amazingly varied and flexible in their capacities. 

Rough sketch of a lunar colony birdsuit as envisaged in the 21st century

They flew near enough to caves for him to see the many kinds of wall homes. They flew above and below and around hovercar lanes. By flattening out after a dive at just abouperfect performance and after starting right against the sky plates they could match speeds with the lower portions of a cable car run and look passengers in the eye for several seconds. They played among flocks of birds and flew in among bats leaving caves for the evening. They work their way to the rail tower and back. Then they got out of their suits and into Roberta’s car and drove like lunatics to get to their dinner reservation.They ate quickly and made love in the shower. Then Joseph asked if she could forgive him wearing the Dreamlearner while they slept. She agreed to forgive him and they slept together just touching on their sides and with their toes.

As he drifted to sleep he dreamed of the fire. He heard his boss’s voice saying (as he had in real life) “You killed four kids Joseph!” He saw one of the four burning his friend Ed alive with a flamethrower as he Joseph could do nothing to help him but was running through rails and beams finally shooting the flamethrower and roasting the killer quickly alive and to death. Then the Dreamlearner took over and he was in the Armstrong performing simple tasks.

When he awoke early in the morning Roberta was already dressed. He ate with her wearing a robe and asked if should meet him for a quick supper the next day. She agreed. “Thanks for everything.” she said. They kissed and he watched her go. Then he went back into the room to change clothes.

Once he had changed his message light was on and so he called the front desk. He asked what the message was. “There is a crater cap engineers and designers convention in the hotel. The Summers Foundation has left an invitation for you to join them at their reception tonight alome or with a guest. No need to RSVP you simply pick up the invitation on your way across the lobby between seven and ten.”

“That is unusual but I am pleased. I have admired the Summers Foundation for years, my family knew the old ones you know.”

 “I see sir, very well.”

 “Listen, I will have to get back and forth to the Armstrong Agency everyday for a while and don’t want to rent a hovercar can you suggest anything?”

 “Yes take the Fall Behind Elevators from the hotel gardens to the Floor their is a train station there and take the Floor train to Twin Towers Hill which is really the east side of the base of the Central Plug. Change trains at SunTzu Plaza and get off at Mouton’s Markets. The very large red dome towering over everything else is the Armstrong Agency’s main building.”

“Part of the floor’s 30 percent they must have stroke here…”

“They certainly do.”

While he was a the desk workstation in his suite he checked into the Summers Foundation online and downloaded his convention invitation to his own e-tab though he would not be likely to need it here in the Hotel. His e-tab cross-reference feature let him know that his neighbor on the shuttle would be there — Shan Da-Jiang was his name he was reminded.He also checked to see what the Foundation would be doing at the convention. He saw that a long with a few other things they would be sponsoring a historical holocube. He looked at one of the documents in the display as it was reproduced at the workstation it was called First Public Proposal. This was dated 2009:

  • Frank Wynerth Summers III 1. Craters are extremely abundant on the far side of the moon and quite abundant on all of the moon, on Mars, on many reachable and theoretical objects in the solar system and elsewhere.2. Craters are avaliable on earth for habitat testing.3. To a large degree craters are able to hold vast pressure differentials because the planet itself is the wall and it cannot really collapse.4. Science can be done and planetology studied both from and in the crater colonies.5. Objectively building a single plane and gaining the value of vast excavations requiring megatons of tnt worth of energy is a much better investment.6. Water and resources will tend to stay in the crater.7.Air and water vapor will tend to seek escape through the cap in which all space technologies are concentrated.8. On Mars certainly and the moon possibly many chemiclas needed to manufacture the atmosphere could be found in the crater.9.An asset of almost limitless value is being created rather than maintaininga very costly resource that is always very marginal almost every way.10. One can project straight lines to having hundreds of farms and 100s of thousands of persons in mining, space industries and service industries permanently living on Mars and on the Moon

   He decided that he would try to make it to the convention. He wanted to learn as much as he could about this technology — it seemed more urgent to him than he could have explained.

*****   ******    ******   *****

Elsewhere in the Lunapolis Crater Cap Colony there was a  building embedded in a cavern in a Communications Mall. Several of the top United Nations officials in the colony of Lunapolis were in the Casual Conversation Cube Cafe simulating a conversation with officials on the major UN orbital forts, the UN centers in New York and Geneva, the UN offices in the Grand Central Spaceport here on the Moon and a base on Mars. This was where these two officials attended the monthly meetings of a special committee called the Panel on Space Crises. The Casual Cnversation Cube provided real communication and also created an illusion of real time conversation, kept minutes, attached relevant documents to the transcript and sent out called for messages during the conversation. One of the UN officials was the UN Registrar of  Intermember Trade and had a good sized office on the colony floor. The other was a man who did not really seem to live in Lunapolis but showed up for these monthly meetings here whenever he was not piloting a longterm route on a ship. Over the past seven years he had made about half the mmetings at this spot and another quarter from the ships he piloted. The last quarter he simply missed without providing any explanation or excuse. Nobody seemed to know exactly where Thor Swensen truly lived. He was the Special Lunar Commissioner for Nonmember Issues and Relations. Nobody on this panel could find any other Special Commissioners for Nonmember Issues and Relations. Everyone else on the panel knew one another’s salaries but Thor received only annual bonus pay and an expense account. He did not look like he could really work for the UN. They knew he had a different style of speech here than anywhere else but this was more than Intelligence Officer cover. He seemed to really live multiple mysterious lives. He was speaking now.

“We have to take the possibility that this is an event of great significance very seriously. If we do not respond well then it need not be the cataclysm the late Doctor Taylor’s report suggests to greatly impact the United Nations. Contact with aliens must be handled and handled very well by the UN or we will lose almost all real claim to legitimacy in the Space side of things. All of our members are very influenced by their Space establishment. I have proposed we doulble the original investment in the placement of technical equipment and experts on the Neil Armstrong”.

“Your request has been approved Commissioner Swensen”. The answer came from Subsecretary for Space Hillman Barclay in New York.

“Thank you. I do want to go on the record that my request was minimal and state that I am in favor of risking any expansion of resources the Panel may approve without my vote”.

“It is so noted. That is unlikely, however I have used your report to reschedule some military assets into a support role”.

 “Good”.

After the meeting Thor called an old friend who was in his third home in the French Colony of Petit Bourdeaux. Jean Claude Landry answered the phone. “JC this is Thor”.

“How are you pal”?

“I am OK. Listen, there is a big event coming down the pipe involving the Armstong, UN and some mysterious science. I will not be able to talk to you about it again. I think you are likely to get a job offer somehow related to this. I urge you to take it we need the best on this team”.

“I hear you pal. It is on my tickler now. I will do what I can”.

Then Thor called into the Pilots Guild and “accidentally” dumped a partial scrambled file from  his recent reconaissance flight with a wormhole detector into a public chat center in the guild. He did not know who would look into this but he figured somebody would do this”.

He then looked at the itinerary for the Neil Armstrong and saw that one of the prize winners was a solid pilot with a security background named Joseph Culkathadreil. He was able to decide that this guy would be a good cabinmate for the trip. He was known enough on the records not to be a spook or pirate and yet not part of the UN network people he was trying to avoid being absorbed by. He also had ties to many institutions of significance which were not seated meber nations. He left he building and began to change his voice, gait and mannerisms. Soon the events inside seemed a foggy and distant memory.  

Under a peculiarity of Lunapolis law any portion of one’s name had most of the uses of of the legal and correct name. This was used by all sorts of people indifferent ways although a serious searxh of the record lines of someone not lying about their names would lead tothe full name and identification eventually. But Thor Patrick Swensen-O’Brien had a long standing identity as Patrick O’Brien who was a regular customer and ten percent owner of the corporation that owned The Boston Commons Bar. This was far more than a bar,  it had five great rooms: an Irish Pub, an American New England lobster house witrh a  bandstand, a large dance hall, a typical Lunarian Mining Engineers nightclub with pool tables and darts and scantily clad waitresses and a select market for premium garden produce.  It was one of two of the most important social gathering, eating and drinkinking places in the colony. The other was the fiefdom of the Grazzini family which was a huge first class restaurant called  The Roman Empire. Patrick O’Brien had a whole host of business dealings with Tomasino Grazzini who was one of the pricelings of the tribe of restauranteurs. Thor put in colored contact lenses sprayed on instant heir color for these meetings in person and only met him a few times each year even on a busy year.

He stood in the farmers market and accepted a purchase order for mushrooms, celery, endive, onions, and olives which met certain standards and which the Grazzini’s could not be sure of getting enough of from their own direct farmers.  This done they transacted some legal marijuana cigarette import business because together they held a near monopoly an the legal wholesaling of this product. Then O’Brien asked  the question he had been formulating. “Do you remember when we had the last names disclosed of the big bosses who won the legal marijuan production plant that supplies us and we found one big guy. Everyone in our business calls him Seigneur Daniel but do you remember his last name — I might have to look it up”  

“Well, it is hell to pronounce when you read it but yes I do remember his name. It is Daniel Culkathadreil”.

“Thank you, I really appreciate that.  I thought that was it”.         

 

A Sense of Perspective: The Bottom Keeps on Falling Out

One of the most constant experiences of my life is that I have always lived in a sense of wonder and amazement that it is possible for the human world and mostly my own life situation in the larger sense to be as horrible as it is.  Recently , I had a number of experiences that have once again confirmed for me that in many ways I live in an extreme horror movie and nightmare from my point of view.  It does seem that when I was younger there were little slivers, cloud linings and whispers of hope for something better. But as I get older it seems that an acceptance of the profundity and totality of the horror of human life and of the world’s destiny and of my own prospects gradually sets in upon me.  In a way it is of course relaxing because in a world of almost total horror there is no great need to worry about every little twist and turn in one’s own plans and efforts. One does not worry as much about one’s diction or dress if one is going to burned alive in the staterooms of a sinking ship and cannot fit through the pothole or open the door. Some things matter less and less. For me perhaps this life is just sort of essentially and phenomenologically hell. 

Perhaps that realization sometimes helps me to look beyond my own life. Perhaps it does not. Nonetheless, it simply abides as a fact and a factor in my mind.

“Sarah Palin’s Alaska” Premieres on TLC

This is a special Sunday in a number of ways for me. It is a bye week for the New Orleans Saints and so I used this as an excuse to take a vacation from my vacation in a sense. I seldom let a Sunday pass without watching professional American football as played in the National Football league during their season. But today I chose not even to watch the other games but to deal with other varied interests and concerns.  One of the many parts of the media universe which I chose to prioritize was the pilot of Sarah Palin’s Alaska on TLC. In fact I am typing this post during commercial breaks and such. The Palin family takes a  floatplane from their front porch into bear country to do some salmon fishing. They talk about the reporter and author  writing a book about her who lives next door to the Palin family home.  The people involved in making the show put on a display of  some  great Alaska scenery and deal with the issues of celebrity and family. These include all the issues of family and of celebrity and not just the places where the two intersect.

She talks about Todd and he talks with her about many things. All the children and extended family seem to be part of the concept of the show.  They also dealt with her work with Fox News. However,  the involvement she has in national politics itself does not seem to be very much a focus of the show. This is perhaps more of an antidote to perceptions created in the political arena.

I think it looks like a pretty good show. I hope it succeeds. Another thing I did today is that after going to mass this morning I went to one of the libraries  I belong to, where someone had a request for a book I had out on the Supreme Court,  and I checked out a book on Sarah Palin — her own Going Rogue: An American Life.

I wish the Palins well. I think that they still have a big role to play in the country’s near future.  

Chapter two of the sixty four chapters of my online novel

Chapter Two “Sex in the City” of Part One “The Moon” a science fiction novel in progress

by Summers Progress on Sunday, October 24, 2010 at 6:25am

The walk to the car was already something special. He felt both attraction and something more for Roberta. But he was aware that neither one of them was really eligible to fall in love and Joseph liked being in love in much the same way that some men liked horseracing, skiing or snorkeling. He looked at Roberta and was determined he would take whatever he could find between them but he also wished for things he had not found or felt in many years.

“You made it clear that this is your first trip to the Moon and I know you just came through the Autodoc scanners. I don’t mind telling you I think you are kind of cute. I think you like me too.”

“Indeed I do like you Roberta.”

“Well, Lunarian women are pretty honest about sex. I would say that if we have a nice time at dinner I consider it a possibility.”

“Then I would consider it a very nice one. How about a kiss here by the lake as a first step.”

“I could do that.”

“They suited deed to word and lingered a while. During that time the Jim Lovell fountain went off in the middle of the pond and shot water lit by lights 200 meters into the air. He felt a tiny spray before they stopped. The taste of the apple, the spray and the thick air and low gravitydrove the experience into his mind. They held hands as they walked towards her hovercar. They synchronized their loping very well. The hovercar was a 2261 Ford Lunarabbit. It had no trunk and was not very fast but it was very popular in the lunar colonies. They lifted up into the final fall of spray and were soon above it. A screen projected on the windshield showed them drawing into one of the air ramps and then into an airlane in which hovercars only were permitted. Then they sped up to about 85 kilometers an hour and headed for one of those big Hotels by a waterfall which he had seen on his way down the elevator.

“Tell me about your home pretty lady. What am I looking at it is all pretty new. I have seen some tv tours but this is very different.”

“American Crater Cap Colonies in our district include four older colonies than ours. The colonies in Ritter, Sabine and Cronkite Craters and all of them were after the first international colony. The Brits have a lot on the Sea of Tranquility but not as much as we do. Our Tauruntius Crater is about fifty six kilometers in diameter and is one of the ten  biggest. Only the really big colonies have those thin silver steel building as office towers you see. The Lunar law requires on for every square Lunar mile. So we have quite a few as well asour large standard columnar building that have the only large elevators and vertical conduits that make our whole colony  work.  We also have the large stone and earth post in the middle that is a natural feature and houses our armory and Lunapolis University.” She pointed at all these  features as she spoke and her voice and gestures were so pleasant Joseph had trouble folloeing her gestures.  She paused to let him spot all that and then turned to the object nearer at hand “The fountain and the waterfall s are pretty but they also help keep the air fresh and humid and clean. About half the fountain water gets back into the pond. Most of the rest falls as spray and keeps down dust and helps with watering. Mist from the four big falls does the same thing. We have five scheduled rains a month during the wet months and one surprise rain. For seven months it is all sprinklers and soaker pipes but they increase the flow on the falls and double the fountain shots. Some tourists like the wet season and some like the dry.”

“Weren’t three crater around here named after Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin back in the twentieth century?”

“They sure were. Luckily none of them are prime colonizing craters. They have all been left alone and are viewable from a tourist train and a viewing tower. I have done the Armstrong Day broadcast there twice. But we have colonies in the American Sector of USA colonies called Collinston, Armstrongville and BuzzEdwinia. Aldrinia is one the best devloped proprietary colonies I have seen and is in the USA Temperate Zone Protectorate a nice train ride north of here on a direct track”.

“You really know this place”.

“Well most Lunarian journalists have worked for Earth media more than a few times telling audiences the same things over and over again. I am no exception”.

“Well, you are still an exceptionally noce looking and well informed tour guide”.

“You don’t have to flatter that much. You already have my attention”. 

 “Well, late me ask you a bit less soft of a question that qhere and how then.  Don’t you ever mind living in a place where weather comes out of a can as they say?”

 “Well it is a very nice can.”

 ” So is yours.”

 “That is as close as you have gotten to naughty.”

 “I can get a bit naughtier.”

Roberta  lowed for a moment and banked as two taxis came closer to colliding in an airlane than any tow cars he had seen so far. she seemed to have been able torecover most of her speed as she came back into the line. He saw the cars computer telling her how it was adjusting on various screen read-outs. Her firm breasts and skin never baked  in an unfettered sun for long mixed with a skill and ease he kept finding more and more attractive. She rolled her eyes from the traffic and sort of looked him over again before speaking.  

“You seem to like Lunapolis pretty well so far. Not just me I mean.”

“I think it is a really amazing place. The crater cap colonies have always amazed me.”

“Yes, 200 years ago there was no air or  concentrations of surface water or life in this crater and there had never been any air, life and almost never any liquid water. We did hit one big ice deposit in early mining but the Equatorial colonies almost all import water. We buy it from temporate colonies with  ice mines, from the UN Polar Pumping Authority and form the Space Water Market. Our population keeps growing faster every year”.

Just about this moment an agressive hovercar cut past them and Roberta banked expertly. Two small jets mounted on the stubby four wings angled down a bit and the six propellors built into the land wheels spun faster. The aftwings extended another two feet each. Then moments later everything went back to its earlier setting. Joseph thought that like everything on the moon the Hovercars looked simpler than they were. This was a sophisticated aircraft.

“Seems like things are moving along pretty well. The town really seems to work. How many people live here.”

“In Lunapolis itself we have about a quarter of a million souls. Not a very big town on Earth but the second most populous on the Moon.”

“Wow, I look down below us and I see lakes, streams, fields, orchards, parks and greenhouses. I see two huge skyscrapers that I know are mostly offices, elevators, repair shops and railworker dorms. It’s hard to believe there half that many people living here.”

“I mentioned the skinny metal buildings. They are more than half offices but have samll shops and condominiums too.  We call the skyscrapers sky holders here. But otherwise you are right, we live in the rooms attached to all those holes, gates, balconies and cave gardens you see on the walls. Most colonies have a seventy percent agriculture and nature law, seventy percent of the floor has to be agriculture or our version of wilderness ecosystem. But in Lunapolis we have an eighty percent ordinance. In addition we have a huge mushroom farm in some of the oldest worked out sections of our mines down below. Most of what we export here is food, tourism and hard science. I saw on your etab schedule when we linked ups units that you had a bus ticket to the Mushroom Malls and were planning to stay at the Ben Bova Hotel. It is the best hotel in a mine on the Moon probably and we have some good boarding houses near the mushroom farms and a small water park. But the mines are pretty rough that is where people cram in”.

“What are the homes there like?”

“Usually a few rooms in each family home sharing a small patio cave with four other homes. The real cheap livings are in dorms. People spend all they have to ship in from Earth in sleeper tubes if they have heart trouble or any of another number of diseases that are esier to treat a s poor person in low gravity than as a rich person on Earth. People come because there is no extradtion and they come to work the mines. Some come believing they will be happy if they can just end their lives off planet — some seem to be right. They all start off living in the mines, well almost all”.  

“So where do the more prosperous live and how do they live here on the Moon”.” 

“Well the best of our homes are in the Waterfall Hotel Sections, the very few private home lots allowed on the floor or in the old neighborhoods of the crater rim parks. The majority of natives live in cave garden apartments in the walls –like me, my parent and all my siblings. But your cousin’s address is where newcomers often start. They live in the dorms in the mines. They are the folks most likely to survive catastrophic breach but otherwise it’s not a very nice area. But it is not like a slum on Earth. First of all your cousin is very likely to have  moved to a cheaper colony and a better house or else has gotten established in a better place here. Some people stay in the mines for generations but mostly they are upwardly mobile people in a land of opprtunity or else they are people with a deecnt lifestyle of low status and wealth. We have no slums  on the American Moon reallly.We have few on the Moon at all.”

“You said the second biggest population. What is the biggest”?

It is the capital of the Chinese Colonial Sector on Mare Frigoris. The colony is called Xiao Beijing and it is built in the Endymion crater which is kind of shallow and insecure looking but is very wide at about 125 kilometers. They have three quarters of a million colonists there and very long, wide and developed mines that now house underground roads and trains connecting Xiao Beijing to the other Chinese crater cap colonies”.

“On the train from the Grand Central Spaceport to the Green Pyramid and Port Clearance here in Lunapolis I saw a few robots, telescope and lots of trains but almost nothing else disrupting the airless natural moonscape. Then you come through the cap and there is the whole world. It is really very dramatic.”

“The Grand Central Spaceport is the biggest development on the Moon outside of the Crater Cap Colonies. Excuse me a second this is a quick ramp to our last lane. I have to pay attention.”

Saying this Roberta accelerated the hovercar. She also pressed a glow button and Joseph felt himself slammed back into his seat. Roberta grinned at his surprise . ” We are allowed one untaxed  boost per day and I think that this will be mine.”

Although he was not sure how traffic systems worked here he could tell Roberta was moving from the main lanes to a sort of feeder route straight towards a wall. The color of several screens in the car changed from green to gold. In seconds he could clearly see the sign that read Hotel Valley View over the entryway. He could see the swimming pools and waterpark as well as the people flyfishing in the pond above the falls. Then in seconds they had landed. Once he had time to notice he saw that they had landed on a broad rubber and metal mesh conveyor belt. Two uniformed valets stepped on the belt and helped them out of the car. He pulled his small e-tablet from his pocket and showed them his contest committee information as they were walked on to a smaller adjoining belt moving a bit slower which deposited them on a still slower moving turntable. He saw that the valets had on watches that were downloading from the e-tablet. The watches had all sorts of barely visible instruments but they were hidden by large antique looking analog watch faces under a diamond sheet cover. The hands seemed to be the real mechanical kind.

Both valets were smiling as they finaly reached the stable pavement. “Well, congratulations on your win sir. You do not have any luggage with you?”

“I just got to Lunapolis. I do have a case at Port Clearance though.”

‘May we send for it?’

“Well fellows I am trying to impress the lady on my arm so I hate to ask but how much will that set me back?”

“It is certainly included in your prize winnings Mr. Cul-Ka-tha-dreil.”

“You even pronounced my name correctly. So please do send for my luggage.”

“I believe you texted in a request for an early reservation for dinner, is that right?”

“I did indeed.”

“Then we will have you escorted to your table and when you finish dinner the case will be awaiting you in your suite.”

“Sounds great. Are you ready to eat, my new Miss Dupuis whom I am calling  Roberta, or is it too early.”

“Not too early. It sounds fine to me.”

The valet affected a formal bow somewhat disguised as a gesture indicating a slight brunette holding menus and standing inside the entry to the grand lobby. “Please follow Meeza there. She will lead you to your table.”

The dinner was served after they had checked their outside vests in the coatroom and been issued temporary outer clothes. Roberta got a shawl and he a jacket. The dinner was rather grand for each of them far finer than the pilot;s bar on the station. But Joseph had known finer dinners. Roberta had not, it was the grandest meal that she had ever had in the finest surroundings.

“Well this is really nice.” Roberta was blushing a little.

“Can you imagine how lonely it would be for me without you here. I am very grateful for the company. I kind of hope you are not married, engaged or part of the prize and that you are thinking of spending some time with me for the next two weeks”.

“I am none of those things. I am willing to consider making a long-term commitment of two weeks as a possibility.” She laughed.

“My life is complicated Roberta. But I won’t ever forget you. I am not trying to be flattering — I could never forget this magical moment. I am not much of a forgetting person anyway.”

“Do you like the band?”

“Yes, Roberta. Would you like to dance?”

” I think that I might.”

They danced a great deal between courses and drinks. Later they ordered another round of drinks into his room. Then their dancing resumed in a more primal and intimate form. Yet it was not ancient or primal either for no ancient man and woman around the gatherings at Lascaux’s caves had mated in such a bed in one sixth gee and in such dense air. They had a wonderful evening. But when Joseph lay back with her on his shoulder he thought of a Culkathadreil family shrine far away, of dreams of family and children and of the days he and his exwife had shared so long ago. A single tear ran down his cheek in the dark and he thought of what two weeks might be like with this beautiful and amazing woman who lay nude and warm against him.

When he did fall asleep he dreamed. In his dream he was on the great ship which he had seen in the videos and the animations on the e-tablet. There was nobody else on the ship. He was wearing his old uniform from the Jupiter Orbiter Station run he had made on the planetary ship The Endeavor. Smoke and mist was pouring up into the corridor where he was walking from the vents in the baseboards. Then he saw his exwife standing at the end of the corridor. She was wearing his junior college rugby jersey and nothing else underneath or along with it. She seemed to be able to see him but not to be looking at him very closely.

Then she waved to him not too kindly or coldly. and began to move on down the corridor. He tried to follow her. The floor was growing hot. He called out, no he could not because the smoke was choking him. He rushed forward and his feet burned.

Then he woke. He was sweating a bit.

Roberta was awake and looking at him. “Are you OK? You were calling out. You kept saying “fire”.

“Did I really.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I am sorry Roberta. I lost my last job after a fire, I got a severance package and decided to try a new start on the Moon. Maybe it affects my dreams.”

“You said you hadn’t flown in a while.”

“I worked catapult security and it was an act of arson.”

“Sounds like it could give you nightmares.”

“Please forgive me and try to go back to sleep. We can talk about it in the morning.”

“I don’t know if we have to go straight to sleep.”

“If that’s how you feel then I completely agree.”

There was a tenderness in their lovemaking that had not been there the first time before the dream. After they made love Roberta put her head on his chest again and talked about her family. She was the oldest of three children and her father had been a musician while her mother had been a Lunar Radio Corporation Executive. She had a brother and a sister who were both married. She had been engaged to a UN Blue Wings Space Fighter Pilot who had started off as a US Air Force Pilot. But he had been killed by the pirates he had caught trying to bring a freighter of smuggled uranium to their buyers running a cap contract in a work site in a far side crater. His name had been Geronimo and she had really loved him.

After they talked a while they had sex with a bit more rawness and passion. This time they both fell asleep exhausted and they did not dream or talk again until the time for free in room gourmet coffee gourmet personal breakfast and a paper had passed. They woke and they were a little awkward as each gave the other all the contact information which they could find or think of and linked their e-tabs for more still. They ordered a brunch in the room and rejoiced that they had met on the day before the weekend in Lunapolis which meant it was Saturday morning. It turned out that lunch for two was part of the prize on weekends but not weekdays. Then they made love one more time and then went to the whrirlpool tub and had mugs of coffee from the coffee machine in the suite. Just about the time they finished the doorbell rang and they put on their robes and let the staff set up their brunch.

“I hope you can join me for supper tomorrow he said as they finished eating.”

“You’re a good listener. That is the next hole in my work schedule. I wouild be happy to help you spend your prize money on food tomorrow.”

“Fantastic.”

Joseph watched her dress then he walked her toward the door and kissed her goodbye. The closing of the door made him feel sad. but he pushed the thought of goodbye away.

 *****     ****    ****  ****   *******   ****

Grorgios Onassis-Papandreiou was in Crater Sinas E which was still waiting for the final paperwork on its colonial name and which was on the iregular southwestern border of the Lunapolis Sector of the Mare Tranquilitatis. It had been capped only two years earlier but it was being developed by investors with deep pockets and was tiny compared to Tauruntius Crater so it was moving fast. This was to be a joint project of the Greek and USA governments and was the central training camp and headquarters off-Earth for the Olympic Committee of each country.  He was a very well respected architect, naval architect, aviation architect and space transport engineer. He had been heired to build the Low Gravity Training Center. He was taking advantage of the opportunity to use the skill of the experts he was working with to get into shape and was finding some of his health problems were disappearing. He was eighty-seven and had been through some tough things in life. However, his health had improved so much in the low gravity routine in the last six months that he decided to take a much smaller fee to design and oversee the building of a hotel on Mars than he would normally take if they would pay for him to have a full autodoc therapy tube on the six month sleeper. He would seal in here on the Moon and take tender ship to connect with his ship while unconscious which was already on its way from an Earth Orbital dock. It was time for him to get to the Old NASA Memorial Hospital at Grand Central Spaceport. He had to say his goodbyes and had done so with everyone but one. The middle aged doctor in his bed was Harriet Bliss who had been a medical consultant with the Sports Medicine Group. She actually had published a paper on the erections of older men getting into shape on the Moon. He could not help feeling that he might just be research. But he had not had sex in four years before this relationship.

He called in the room service that only he and a few others were entitled to receive. He set the table and as his middle-aged lover came to the table he kissed her hand. “I will miss you Doctor Bliss. But we are both headed to Mars, maybe we can see eachother there.”

“I hope so Georgie. When the Armstrong arrives in port it should be on every news medium on the planet but you won’t be there yet. I am not sure when I will get home but I am sure that I will check and keep a lookout for your ship as long as I am there”.

“That sounds great, Harriet. I have sent my luggage on ahead to the train station already and have arranged for you to be welcome to these rooms for the next three days if you wish to use them. But I really must leave in a few minutes”.

“Darling, I am not as new to the spacer’s life as you are.  Bad scheduling and long separations are likely with anyone you meet. We can take this as carefully as we can. I really do like you — don’t worry”.

They talked a bit more and then kissed passionatley and she watched him leave. Mentally she rated him the thrid best octogenarian  

lover she had ever had and not as good as the ninety three year old who had just gotten out of ten-year slow-boat rejuvenation sleeper tube to mars. She liked that these men treated her as though she were young and tender. She could remeber a time when she had been both and she often missed that time. She did not stay for three days and as she caught the Lunapolis train home she rode in the same car with the Dupuis Band. She chatted with the lead singer she had met a few days before and he told her they usually played at a Lunapolis bar called the Boston Commons. He also transferred a file to her e-tab of bars and clubs worth seeing at least once in Lunapolis.

On arriving in Lunapolis through the hilly and rocky passes of the new track from Sinas E she saw the new array of meteor dtection scopes beside the old Kepler 12 Planet Search Array.  The bleakness of the landscape still frightened her more than open space. She loved the crater colnies but hated the surface more than an asteroid belt and could not figure out why.   Leaving the train she returned her fashionable tailored travel suit to her rental agency and caught the express elevator to Lunapolis University. She walked amid the students and junior faculty on Central Cavern Way to the Library.  She called on and old friend who was heading the biology research task force.  Their paths had crossed on Earth, the Moon and in space. He was eating a simple lunch in a faculty lunchroom with  a woman friend and they were generous enough toserve her some of their ample prepared meal of redfish coubouillion on rice and bacon wrapped doves with salad. It was delicious. “I am saying goodbye to an old friend the once again Ms. Guidry who was Mrs. Broussard-Summers. She is a great Acadian cook and has just come from selling the second home she got from her ex-husband in a divorce a few years ago. She is on her way to Grand Central Spaceport to catch a shuttle to a Supercruiser to Mars to meet her fiancee and was kind enough to feed me on her way out”.

“Good to meet you, I am called Dr. Bliss here. I got divorced twelve years ago, I believe it was. I wish you well”.

“Yes, it is kind of difficult right now we had good memories in that home”.

“Where was your home”?

“In the Ethnos Arkadios Corporation  proprietary colony in Menelaus Crater on the Mare Serenitatis. It was a nice wall house”.

“I have been there. It is a very nice place and I really like the casino”.

“Well we were five hundred yards west of the Casino near the Carl Brasseaux Memorial Archives and overlooking theWolves of the Wild World Zoo and the dog park”.

“That’s a very nice area”.

After exchanging some confidential research files with her friend she went to the Central Plug Cable Car Staion and caught a cable car to the station nearest the hotel  where she had her suite. In her room she opened her account on the Armstrong Agency’s webchannel and watched the interview withJoseph Culkathadreil. She ignored the female interviewer and noted that the pilot she would be traveling to Mars with was  nice looking despite a shabby ruggedness. She smiled at the possibilities this brought up.     

Accidentally Deleted Comment

I delete many comments identified as spam every week– often many in a single day. Sometimes, I find good comments in the spam pile and publish them. Someone had a real question of a historical nature and I did not notice it till I had hit “delete”. Please post again if you read this and I will try to give you an answer or refer you to one in the blog.

The Ongoing American Struggle

America is in a state of real struggle and perhaps beyond any simple power of solution. Yet there must be an attempt to solve the crises we face nonetheless. As the crisis moves toward a climax we face the need to resolve some issues quickly while at the same time we face the destruction of what social fabric we have unless we can  make a strong advance in areas where we are currently completely surrendered or nearly so anyway.

1. We must secure our borders and ports and formal functions of leadership from being overrun by essentially foreign interests.

2. We must change the debate from the irreconcilable and stupid big government-less government to debates on more complicated issues of policy.

3. The atomic bomb and the exploration of the moon are the two greatest American technical achievements and we must redeem and establish them as part of ongoing policy.

4. We must seek the right kinds of major constitutional reform and redaction so that we are not governed in madness.

5.We must tax, regulate and control the trade in currently illegal drugs with Federal parameters licensed in States and other jurisdictions.

6. We must save the Gulf Coast and the south Louisiana wetlands.

7. We must establish   a better and richer foreign service community.

8. We must  create sound family policies.

9. We must cut our debt.

10. We must create a large infrastructure and manufacturing sector.

We are on the brink of societal collapse. The chance to act in our own self-interest is slipping away. There will be few more chances to save our country after this season has passed.

First Chapter of My Science Fiction Novel on the “Summers Progress” Account on Facebook

Chapter One “First Trip to the Moon” of Part One “The Moon” a Very Different Sci-fi “First” Contact Novel in Progress

by Summers Progress on Friday, October 22, 2010 at 10:40pm

“Those days were above all the age of the Crater Cap Colonies. No other technology or social scheme had such an influence on the period of the Contact as did the Crater Cap Colony. While it was devised in a Facebook Group in the Twenty-First Century it came into its own just at the middle of the twenty-second century”. Historical Essays Section, Encyclopedia Humanitica

****  ****  ****  ****  ****

The Shuttle from Earth Orbit Station 13B was a bit crowded to say the least. There were both cheap trap tube and foldo seat tickets. Joseph Culkathadreil was not in one of those. He was in the economy seating and had a window seat. His Pilot Guild ID was worth a 40% discount on the shuttle, 25% off of his days fees at the station and would have been worth 17% off of the big ticket which was the EarthupShuttle. However, a friend who ran travel arrangements for the secretive Culkathadreil Consolidated Capital Corporation had pulled some strings to get him a temp job piloting the hop. So he had actually earned enough to pay for the other 75% of his Station fees. In the pilots bar there he had met a man who knew the best ways to get work at the Lunapolis Pilots Clearinghouse. In return for the information he had bought him a few beers. But the old pilot told him not to be too optimistic. He had exhausted his own willingness to use any influence or favors that involved Culkathadreil interests. The company was too secretive to be known to most people and too small to be well known to those with the resources to know most things. The name gave him just a bit of panache and set off his web of small scars, his years spent in hard and unglamorous positions with a bit of class. He also got a small dividend each quarter on a few shares of preferred stock in his designated portion of a protected trust. Togher with his severance packet from his last real job he planned to live on that till he found work.

Beside him was a tall man with the badges and pocket instruments of a Crater Cap Engineer. Joseph asked him how he was and what he was planning to do on the Moon. “If it is not too personal?”

“Not personal at all. We are putting together a team in Lunapolis and then heading off to finish the basic cap on a new colony they are opening in a crater on the far side of the Moon. You planning to fly for someone out of Lunapolis?”

“Yes, but I do not have a regular job yet — no job at all, really.”

“Well don’t forget to call the Wang Crater Cap Corporation once you are registered. We always need a few pilots it seems like.”

“I will do that. I am embarassed to say that I have worked in the space industry in general and colonization in particular a good part of my life and yet I know so little about the caps really. What makes that even more embarassing is that I grew up on an artificial island. And the plans fo those owe alot to some of the people who devloped the caps. ”

“Those wouldn’t be the islands in the Gulf of Mexico would they I thought I heard a little of South Louisiana in your voice.  We still buy cap components there you know.”

“You are a pretty good detective. I am indeed from the Culkathadreil Archipelago in the South Louisiana Super Archipelago of artificial islands. My name is Joseph Culkathadreil”. 

“Pleased to meet you you can read my name on my badge of course”. There was an awkward sort od gesture here that was niether a bow nor a handshake and yet was more than an inclination of the head, both men stumbled though it in the way that men not used to stumbling socially can when they must — the seats were not spacious for one thing.The engineer continued speaking relatively seemlessly now.  “About the caps they are simple enough: First they keep out cosmic and solar radiation but you can put solar panel up on top to gather the power. Second, you start channeling that power into heat and light it starts to warm up or if it is a blazing hot place to cool but iluminate as you block the sun. On the mooon many craters are below 45 degrees Kelvin on the floor — that is super cold. You put a cap on the place and nowadays we send out coldbots to scoop up methane and hydrogen and burn it that adds to the build up from solar powered heaters and lights. Third, in most spots we choose water ice starts to melt and gathers in ponds and streams. You see Pilot Culkathadreil, even though we pump or mine for more later we have water on the Moon and on Mars at that stage. Fourth. we start with all airlocks and pressure suits but we put in a base of miners and start planting domed gardens and keep burning the methane and heating the mines, spoils and floor. Fifth. the miners were masks but atmospheric pressure is fine and the climate is chilly but not brutal on the floor. Sixth, the miners crap and urinate and sometimes die and we recycle all their waste properly into compost or bury them to decay into the soil. Seventh, we can bring in a few real farmers. When this goes on the right way long enough you can get a place like Lunapolis”.

“And what do you do mostly in that process”? Joseph had listened carefully and although he had probably seen much of the process on TV he felt he understood it better than before.”I mean, do you specialize somehow — I see you are high grade CCC engineer”?

“Yes and while I was talking I checked on your name and see Joseph Culkathadreil is in the Inventor’s Guild as well. That’s impressive”!

“Well it is a little bit of income honestly but directly sent to previous commitments. I patented two form of shooter dart and a bullet for shooting through and between spaceships”.

“You are a scary man then. But I hold about ten patents. Two are for quicker heaters one is nuclear and one purely solar. I hold three for first roof projectors which put something upa as a scaffold and shield. I also have patents on inflatable column building components which help to support the early caps. So while I do it all Culkathadreil I spend a lot of time supporting my own stuff nowadays”.

“I am seated next to a legend here in economy. I am surprised but honored”.

“I am not quite a legend. I fly in space a great deal and I am a small man. I find economy comfortable and the difference in cost pays fro my duaghter’s tuition in medical school and my son’s tuition in Nuclear engineering by the end of the year. By the way, I have a tutorial on caps for investors shall I give it to you”?

“Thank you I would love to have it”. The men touched e-tabs and the addresses, nonconfidential biographies and other data were exchanged as well as Joseph receiving the three minute depiction of the first six months of amodern capping project.   He scanned a bit of it on the synopsis feature of his miniscreen.”That is pretty amazing Engineer. I have seen films and TV  shows made on Lunapolis and it is hard to imagine it starting like that”. 

“Films and TV, huh…  Pilot Culkathadreil, have you ever been to the Moon before?”

 “No, I have flown to space a good bit but this stay on the station was my longest in Space in the Earth Gravity Well. I mean off planet of course.”

 “”But you have shuttled from a station to a planetary ship to pilot I am guessing. Otherwise it would not take so long for you to say all of this. You would just say longest time off planet ever.”

 “Yep, I made just one trip as a subpilot actually but it was a big trip.”

 “Well one thing you should know about the Moon is that most people say the sex is better than anywhere else. One sixth gee is much better than the gees on the Earth or Mars and bodies work much better than in zero gees. Women usually bed a new pilot first-timer pretty quick I hear.”

 “Well, that is something to look forward to then. I am gloriously unattached certainly.”

 ‘Well, they are airing a sneak preview of the new Lu movie right now. I think I will put on my earpieces.”

 “I may join you then.”

As though to fulfill the prophecy of their conversation the Lu film was In the Cold and was the story of a Chinese American family who moved to Lunapolis on the Moon from San Francisco on Earth. One of the sons died in the rush of melting ice in a new crater cap colony on the Far Side. Joseph thought it was a pretty good film.  

The landing was not at any the colonies but at Grand Central Spaceport. Joseph went thought the AutoDoc scanners and presented his ticket to the luggage claim. He looked a walls of stone carved with maps labeled with features and with metal markers showing human settlements. He saw boards showing arrivals and departures. He walked to the display globe in the huge holoshow cube. The diversity of people and costumes in the great lobby was amazing. He also saw the vast dome above him like a great mosque he thought in which nearby anti-meteor battery towers were the minarets. This dome was red glass, steel webbing and siligel. Two large tunnels went to the blue dome and the white dome and another two tunnels went to two crater cap colonis of very modest sized craters that were part of the complex. However at various view points he could see the large network of train tracks the came to the red dome and then branched out more and more. He could see the surface tubeways that ran from the blue dome to the catapults that launched most of the outgoing shuttles and freight tenders. The white dome connected to  a web of surface and emergncy vehicles and the very few roads there were on almost road free Moon. His ticket to Lunapolis said Quadrant E and as he left the lobby and entered the Quadrant E  wing he saw the sign over the entry said Quagrant E–Equatorial Region. Then the ticket said Concourse MT and when he reached this it was the Councourse for all colonies in the Mare Tranquilitatis or Sea of Tranquility. Here he got on a moving walkway in the most crowded walkway or route and all wre headed to the Lunapolis Colony. US customs operated a scan gate as everyone entered the Lunapolis lobby and he went through without event.  The Lobby had a large ceiling mosaic depicting the founding of the colony and a good diner he had no time for at the moment. In several places the same phrase was written or carved “Lunapolis, Capital City Of USA Lunar Colonies built in the Tauruntius Crater on the Sea of Tranquility”. He heard nobody around him mentioning Tauruntius Crater however, everyone said Lunapolis. He saw that some people had rental cards and people helped them into nice travel suits other had their own rental lockers, suit check desks or their luggage. However he got the silly looking proteinate suits issued by the trainline.They looked like condoms even though they were very tough. The helmets and fingertips stayed open until there was a sudden decreas in air pressure. The suit would seal up and allow one to get from an armored train car that had been breached and into another car that was still sound. He noticed that well over half the passengers had these suits that were included in the price. Nobody was allowed into the train without somekind of pressure suit. He tried to tighten the belt and two straps. Meanwhile he shuffled along with others headed for the Lunapolis Express.

Minutes later he was on the train to Lunapolis. Almost nothing but raw moonscape and train tracks were visible for most of the thirty minute trip. He saw the big cater rim approaching his window as they banked on a turn fo the final approach. Getting out of the Train after it had slowed to a stop on the great white crater cap sheet he saw dozens of huge solar collectors until the train entered the airlocks of the large green pyramid in the center of the cap. He reported to colny customs and checked his luggage into a delivery crate locker so it would follow him to any hotel or apartment he found. Important people and rich people were being met by well dressed footmen from fine hotels. Robots were cleaning floors, serving coffee and helping people with their luggage. Colony craftspeople were selling souvenirs mostly to those who were leaving.

He hustled on to the discount elevator with many others. He watched windows pull out below the bottom layers of the cap. No picture or holoshow aproximated the real experience. On distant crater walls two wispy water falls fell well over a thousand feet each had two great hotels on the wall each at the place the water circulated through the hidden pipes and spilled out of caves and rocky ponds. He saw them from above straigh on and below very quickly. He saw feilds, swamps and forests as well as orchards rushing towards the bottom elvator. For a few moments they reached freefall and were held in place by their straps. Then they began to slow and sink back to the floor. He wore a newcomer’s magnetic shoe tape and made his way from the landing strip to the floor transit hub. He found a bus marked “Navigation Park — Elevator prime”. When he said Lunapolis Pilots Clearinghouse he was given a chit which had the words “Nav.Park stp2 J.Lovell fount/LPC” printed on the unfamiliar gray material.

When Culkathadreil got to the Pilots Clearinghouse he was tired. He was very weary and his mind was focused on whether or not he would get any work at all. He was not looking for any great or unusual to happen. From our point of view writing or reading about his life in an era that we all call the New Dawn we know that Joseph Culkathadreil is one of the most famous names of that era. He did not anticipate that and was closer to hanging on to what hope and dignity he could when everything in him cried out to just crawl away and lick quite few wounds fom a hard life thus far.

He did not notice a rather obvious plastic screen out of place or the top of a toy balloon sticking out above its upper edge. In the past he had noticed far more subtle things when his life depended upon it. He had suffered the fatigue that comes from noticing too many little things when nothing depended upon it. However, on that day he noticed nothing. Not untill the artificial sky of Lunapolis changed from its normal colors as he filled out his name on the registration screen. Birds and animals across the vast canyon floor responded as the sky flashed red, white blue and showed images of night stars and a vast ship. The screen he’d overlooked earlier showed large letters spelling “Joseph Culkathadreil is Our Winner!”Pipes and drums of various kinds sounded through the sound system all around him. About a dozen people in dresses, suits and overalls that he could see all belonged to something called the Colony Contest Committee were swarming around him. Some held balloons, some let balloons go and some held up flashing e-signs.

Another dozen of the same group seemed to be appraoching on glidecycles. He turned to the clerk looking to connect all this noise to the action he had just performed. “You won! Are you excited?”

He looked at the winning smile kindly. She was a cute short girl who he guessed might have been born with dwarfism and sent to grow up on the Moon as a child wherre medicine and low gravity made miracles commonplace for that disease. “I don’t know what I won, but maybe so…”

“I am so happy to be the one on duty, I get to go to the launch party now!”

“Launch party?”

“Yes, oh how can you not know — you won a duty post on the “Neil Armstrong”‘s Mothball Cruise.”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely this is a huge contest.”

Joseph pulled out the Philip Morris Pilot’s Pleasure cigarette that lighted itself automaticaly as it left the pack and gave off no smoke. He drew once on it and breathed out a tiny puff of smoke which was only a warnable matter here but on a planetary ship would draw a real and sizable fine. The lights of the Channel Nine News ‘copter and of two of it flybots were now lighting him up. The lights made it harder to see exactly how the Contest Committee was forming up around him. But he saw the the pretty red haired woman wearing a reporter’ red vest reading “MEDIA” in block lettters. She angled up beside the square jawed man with a neat hair cut who held out an e-tablet as he stood before Joseph but also smiled and cheated his position to be in view of the flybots and thir built-in cameras.

“Captain Third Class Joseph Samuel Culkathadreil, you are the certified winner of the Colonial Commission Contest for a duty post on the Neil Armstrong’s final cruise.”

Joseph was more intensely aware of the sound of the machinery in the flybots as they bobbed around recording everything. He smiled and said, “This is great! I am thrilled.”

He reached out and took the e-tablet. The man smiled as he handed it to him bigger and tootheir than before. ” We at the Contest Committee want to thank Lunapolis, the Colonial Commission and the Armstrong Agency for another great contest with another great result.”

The reporter waved her link glove and said “Pilot Culkathadreil and Chariman Wylies can we get a good handshake for the viewers?”

Both men obliged. Joseph smoking with the cigarette now in the side of his teeth. Almost as soon as the handshake was done the Contest committee retreated from him to a nearby set of cart with champagne and appetizers. He was alone with the lovely reporter. ” Well here we are on May 23, 2264 with someone I believe is an experienced spacer but quite new to Lunapolis. He signs up on a form that says he will take any space piloting job almost and wins the sweetest berth around. How does it feel to have won a ride on the Neil Armstrong and the pay of a Super Cruiser Pilot?”

Joseph looked at the elements of the prize listed on the screen of his e-tablet and he was stunned at the unexpected change in his fortune. “It feels pretty fantastic actually;” is what he said. “I can hardly believe it.”

“Well, that sounds pretty calm and reasonable. Can you tell our audience what is the biggest ship you ever flew before this?”

“I was Junior Captain on the New Orleans ISS72 run for eight years. We carried fitfy people and five tons of cargo before the catapults picked up the traffic. Then on my way up on this trip I was temp co-pilot on CapultCat76 we were 130 people and five tons of supplies. The Cat also pun off two sattelites. Between those trips I did a run on a planetary but I was not a pilot I was onloy a listed sub pilot. ”

“So Having a full online duty post on a mile long supercruiser will be a change I would imagine. Isn’t this a great story. I am sure much of my audience and viewership will agree that you look to youbg to have ever been a hopper skipper before the cats.”

“I can address both of those issues at once. It will be a change even if I had flown the planetary it would have been a change. The one I was on was stasis rig and I look about twelve years younger than I am because of it. I was never any where near Mars where we are going on the Armstrong. We went the slip route to Jupiter, the Mars New Array will be very different indeed.”

“Sounds like an adventure and an adventurer have found eachother then.”

“I am finding the adventure on Lunapolis pretty enjoyable right now.”

The reporter had obviously gotten his implications and inferences. She moved her glove and in between edits gave him a knowing wink. She then gave a bout a minute of closing remoarks while he picked up a couple of champagne flutes. When he turned back towards her the lights were growing dark and the flybots were reattaching to the cases built for them on the quiet electric copter. The pilot waved and smiled noticeably in the reporter’s direction and then veered off to join a flow of air traffic over the park. The amount of lying in these lunar colonies was hard to take in. High air pressure and low gravity made it easy to fly.

Joseph held one of the champagne flutes out to the woman. ” I hear most Lunarians are pretty fond of drink, are you one of them?”

“I have been to Earth twice for high school and once for a world tour. But I hve lived the rest of ,my life on the Moon. Earth is all about gravity drugs, sleeptrainer beds and braces for me. Lunarians drink more because most colonies have a 70% oxygen atmosphere with many times the sea level air pressure on Earth. The low gravity make ishard for blood to fall to your feet, the oxygen makes it hard to get intoxicated. So we have to work to get a buzz here. So thanksfor the champagne.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you’d like to keep drinking and maybe owrk on background for a feature story on me? We could have dinner in my hotel.”

“You move pretty fast.”

“Slow pilots are dead pilots. But look I do not even know your name and I won two weeks at a nice hotel with dinner for two included. I have never been to the Moon before and you are someone I seem to be able to talk with, so how about it.”

“Well, it is not impossible. I do want to do a feature. I also eat. How did you get here?”

“I have luggage in the trains locker at Port Clearnace. But I just came on a bus from Elevator Tower. I also had planned to try to find a distant cousin who had a postal box in the Elevator Tower and a an old physical address in the dock dorms. That pretty much sums up all the connections I have in Lunapolis.”

“Well then at least let me give you a ride to your hotel and then we’ll see. If you can make out that parking lot over there beyond the pond that comes up to the veranda of the Registry Offfice then you know where we are going. I am parked there.”

Joseph took a long stride off the magnetized pavement and thenleaped up about ten feet and got a good view of the parking lot. Then He bent down and removed his newcomer’s shoe nets. There was a depository for them at the registry and he dropped them into it as they walked past. He walked beside his semi-date with a pilot’s skill in adjustment. Nonetheless he was very aware of his clumsiness as he tried to match the long and loping strides used by colonists on the Moon. The path alongside the Registry led among fruit trees first in a statuary park and then continued along the pond with fruit trees on one side and benches facing the pond on the other side. An aplle fell from one of the trees with impossible slowness.

Joseph was amazed to see the speed, grace and dexterity with which the young woman moved from his die to rush airborne to the apple.Her arm and fingers moved like a beautiful fleshly serpent and siezed the apple just as her foot found a small stone in the grass and pushed hard enough to send her up and in a parbola to land beside the spot where his last stride was landing him.

“How about a snack between champagne and dinner?”

“Sounds good”

The reporter smiled and dropped the apple towards his open palm as she looked at his nodding and smiling face. He used this as a chance to display his own speed and skill. She barely saw his other hand flick his cigarette into a trash bin, reah down and grab his knife from his pocket and open it as his right hand seized and positioned the apple. She did see him split the apple and then skewer half of it and offer it to her while he brought the other half to his mouth with his left hand.

“Bravo, you are an impressive man.” Her voice held bothe teasing laughter and real admiration.

“Then we are mutually impressed. In all thais getting impressed I have never caught your name.”

“Right, you are new here and you were getting the champagne when I did the sign off. My name is Roberta Dupuis and I will definitely follow up my half apple with a real meal with you.”

“I am very pleased.”

“Well, I think you might be.”

This is just a drawing of what any Lunar Crater Cap Colony might be like. For the key go to the group “Crater Cap Concept Colony Group” in my list of groups.

 

Drawing of the view of a proprietary crater cap colony from above