The first thing Keiron resolved to do was to continue to write to Cas. Whether his messages were getting through or not, he felt closer to her when he wrote. And anything that made the current situation feel even a little bit more normal seemed like a good idea. But he also resolved to try not to complain to her about that current situation.
He wrote several times over the next couple days.
Cas,
I know you are trapped in an ice mine and I am starving on Luna. But there is nothing I can do about either of those things, so I’m going to talk about something entirely unrelated.
Let me tell you about the Observation Room. It’s a big circular room. The walls and ceiling are a geodesic dome with windows of clear glass. Maybe plexiglass, I dunno. But it’s clear and I can see out. When it’s sunny, I can see the details of the landscape around us. That’s interesting, but I prefer when we are shaded. That’s when the stars come out.
We are in the bottom of a crater, but the lower portions of the room are covered in screens that can display views of the sky that would otherwise be blocked. With the screens turned on, those blocked parts of the view are filled in with live imagery from cameras on the rims of the craters. So I can see the whole expanse of sky. It’s a pretty cool trick. I can also see the landscape beyond our crater complex. It’s rugged, and the Sun, close to the horizon, casts super long shadows.
When I turn those screens off, I see only the patch of sky above that is not blocked by the crater walls. I can sometimes see sunlight, high up on those walls. And this sunlight moves around up there, slowly, as the Sun moves around the horizon.
It’s weird out there.
KeironCas,
What does a day mean?
Earth takes 24 hours to complete a rotation. That’s a day for me.
Mars takes 24 hours and 37 minutes. That’s a day for you.
Luna takes 29.5 Earth days to complete a rotation. Is that a day? Of course not! That would be silly.
In Metzger, we maintain a day-schedule of 24 hours just like Earth.
KeironCas,
I should tell you about the darkness.
Metzger Base is in the bottom of Henson Crater, which is at the South Pole of Luna.
Being at the South Pole means that as Luna rotates, the Sun moves all the way around the horizon rather than overhead. Due to axial tilt, sometimes it’s a little above, and sometimes it’s a little below. But it just goes around and around.
Henson is an old crater. There is still a rim, but it is worn down and overlain by two newer craters: de Gerlache and Sverdrup. All these rims and partial rims create a complex landscape that sometimes blocks the Sun as it moves around the horizon. So we are in shadow for part of the lunar month.
But nearby is an area that never sees the Sun. Ever. We call such an area a permanently shadowed region. Permanently, as in hasn’t seen the Sun for billions of years. Think about that. I’ve been there once, on a tour during our first few days, and, I have to tell you, Cas, it’s weird. One minute, you’re in sunlight, and the next, you’re in darkness that has lasted eons.
So, it’s dark there. And cold. The outside temperature averages -183 degrees C. I read that the coldest it gets on Mars is -153 at the poles, so I think I have you beat there. Ha ha.
Because of this endless darkness, there is water ice on the surface there, and that ice is why Metzger is here.
KeironCas,
I told you about how the Sun moves around the horizon. But I didn’t tell you that the Earth is upside down and bounces slowly up and down.
True story.
KeironIn this way, Keiron protected his sanity as the situation around him worsened.
There was another thing he had decided to do.
Keiron knew he was shy. He tended to avoid eye contact and would look away rather than engage with people. But, in his effort to follow imaginary-Cas’s advice and keep going, he realized this behavior wasn’t helping anyone.
The hallways of Metzger were unfriendly now. Mostly, people seemed to be ignoring each other. But he had witnessed incidents of actual meanness--cutting in line for ration service and arguments over portion size, things like that. Adults were behaving in ways he didn’t think adults, or kids for that matter, should behave.
So, he resolved to be friendly. He decided to try to make eye contact with the people he passed in the halls; to smile at them and not look away. It was a small thing, he knew, but there wasn’t much else a twelve year old could do. And if it helped brighten the mood of someone, maybe they would help brighten the mood of someone else. In this way, he felt he was doing something to make the situation better.
It was terribly uncomfortable at first. And most often, people would just look away and ignore him. But once in a while, a smile would form on the other’s lips, and the feeling this gave him made it easier to continue. So much so that he now found himself wandering the halls for no other reason than to smile at people.
Several times, during his ramblings, he saw a red-haired girl who appeared to be walking around the hallways just like he was, but she never looked at him or smiled. She walked quickly, as if she were exercising. He remembered her from a gathering of the Metzger Base kids during his first week. Her name was Ro. She was two years older than he was and had been in Metzger for six months.
For some reason, she made him nervous and, even though he wanted to look at her, he found her particularly hard not to look away from. But one day, as they passed each other in a narrow hallway, she looked at him just as he was looking at her. Rather than look away, he forced himself to smile and say hi. She smiled back. Then she made a rude gesture with her hand and walked on, laughing to herself but not to herself.
Keiron kept walking too. He shook his head, unsure what had just happened. He looked back, but Ro had already turned a corner.
He felt shaky. He couldn’t tell if it was from hunger or excitement. He felt drained by the experience, as if his ability to interact with people was a resource that had been used up for the day. But there was also a lingering excitement at having made eye contact with her. He made his way to the Observation Room to sit and think.
Cas,
It’s the end of the world, and I might like a girl.
KeironHe paused, considering what else to say. Couldn’t think of anything so he clicked send.
One advantage of imaginary responses is that they arrived immediately, without the usual light delay.
Keiron,
Ha, well I did say to keep going. You go guy.
CasKeiron realized this was complete foolishness. But it felt nice to have a secret. And the flutter in his stomach was more pleasant than the usual growling.