18th August
My name is Marjorry Keiko Donatello and I live in the Future-Past.
You see, there is a guy Solomon who wanted “The Future” he grew up wanting as a kid. He wanted it so bad, the local story goes, that he got really rich, and he bought it for himself. He still lives here. You see him sometimes. Nobody knows how he got that rich, but he got that rich all right, and he bought a mine on the Moon, turned it into The Future, and built this town under a dome, with a nice spaceport and robots and a guy they say is an android, and an actual Space Alien, and a College. I got accepted to the college, so here I am. I have been here for a week.
And here, they tell me, I am stuck for the rest of my life.
It happened like this.
I got into an argument with a guy. He said no matter what you do, you can’t get on a playground swing and do a 360 on it. Not so, I said! I seen it done!
No, no, he said. It’s been proven, you can’t do it, you must be deluded or something.
But I seen it done!
So I thought, I’ll show this guy, and I found a nice big tree and put up a swing in it, and started swinging. Yeah, I know, swings don’t swing exactly the same way on the Moon but I was going to show this guy! Well, I got a little confused or something trying to swing the swing and somehow I let go of it and went flying off the swing with my legs sticking out smack into the dome, and I broke my leg. Badly.
I got carted off to the Bios Center which is the silly name they call the hospital here. They imaged the leg and all got very concerned. And all this politics, it gets dragged in.
Here’s the situation. Wargentin, which is the town, named after the crater it’s in, declared independence some years ago. This was fine with a lot of other countries and The U. S. of A. had a fit. They were making money off the mine, the Americans, which had been owned by one of their citizens until Solomon bought it.
Now, back when I was a little kid, there was an International Space Station and anyone could come and go from there. That was before all the “Nationalist Revolutions” and now things are weird. It’s like that Tom Lehrer song about National Brotherhood Week. Everybody hates somebody else and everybody hates Wargentin because Wargentin is just being Wargentin and like the city motto says, “A Good Time Was Had By All.”
There is only one space station left that lets ships from Wargentin dock there. It’s called Gamow Station and it’s a dump. So if I we’re gonna be evacuated from Wargentin, I would have to go through there, right? Right.
Now. There’s a problem. I have a severely broken leg. Gamow won’t allow anyone with a severe injury on the station, because of insurance or liability or something.
I could get the leg fixed right away at Wargentin, but it would heal, they told me, adapted to 1/6 gee and I would have to get it re-fixed if I ever returned to Earth. Or else, I could stay on the moon with the healed leg and just stay here. That would be fine with me, I like it here; people are friendly and stuff.
No, you don’t want to do that,” I was told by one of the doctors here, a lady Dee. Dee is a weirdo; she started a cult just to show how easy it was to do, then she abandoned it. It’s still going! Anyway, she said, “If you stay here, you are an Indoor Cat. No more lazy days at the beach. No more rolling around in the grass. No more going for long walks.” Let me tell you, she hasn’t been on Earth for a long time because nobody in their right mind would do any of those things anymore, even if they could. Least ways, I never did any of that stuff anyway. So we argued about it for a couple of days here and finally they decided I was “intransigent,” and now I am a permanent Lunar resident with two functioning legs.
Whether I will be a Wargentin resident once I graduate is another story. I would like to be. But it’s not that easy.
I should tell you something about myself. I was born in New York City. My father is Italian and my mother is Japanese and when I was four, we moved to Parma in Italy because why I don’t know. When I was 11, I got sent to a boarding school in Ireland. Now I’m here and there really isn’t much else to say about any of that.
I am majoring in Astro-Microbiology. Most astrobiologists are looking for “higher” forms of life but that’s just flashy and that’s about all. The things that go on in a single cell are so totally amazing and so absorbing and fascinating and complex, they put the coarse behaviour of a multicellular animal to shame! I got a see a Martian microbe in school once. Here at Wargentin they have microbes from Europa and Ceres and Enceladus and a dozen other places that on Earth they’re only waiting for. The Space Alien, referred to as The Alien Cat or The Hairy Death, sometimes goes out and brings back stuff from various places.
No, really! And sometimes the starship goes off on its own and brings back stuff! For example, a few years ago it went out and brought back both Voyager spacecraft and told off everybody, that it’s rude to clutter up the spacelanes with discarded junk!
Anyway. This semester I am taking Public Writing—I have to write actual hand-written letters to pen pals, they gave me a list to pick from. Lunar Living, just general how to get along in town and cope with the crowding and stuff. Music. I had to pick an instrument. I picked drums. Astrobiology 101. Microbiology 101.
I need to tell you about this writing course because it tells you a lot about the whole town. Here I am, in what’s supposed to be the most technologically advanced place in the Solar System, and I have to write actual handwritten letters and NOTES, on paper, with nib pens! Up here they think if you can’t recycle it or make it easily from things that grow around here—and things grow on every flat surface in the domes—you don’t use it. So no real pens. And no pencils because little carbon and no wood. So we use old fashioned nib pens and make ink from plants. I made a decent purple from gentian flowers and beet root, but we, my fellow students and me, we haven’t had to actually write in forever and now my hand hurts.
And we have actual in-person classes in classrooms and we have to take notes. No recordings. In fact, they say, “no electronic devices allowed in class unless they have tenure.” Why? Because, they said, “Eyes→Ears→Brain→Hand→Paper→Eyes→Brain” is best for retention. Besides, they say, writing things by hand makes you slow down and think, and slowing down and thinking is a skill you need up on the Moon. Wargentin isn’t like other schools. They care about you having information in your brain, it’s not “look it up!” all the time. That was all I really learnt from the teachers at the boarding school was how to look stuff up.
I have what used to be called a “tutor” in England and here is called a Mentor. Her name is Dr. Prof. Sharon Kuse and she has been nice to me so far. She did her Ph. D. research here and wrote a book on Alien Cats. She teaches comparative neurology. She’s friends with the guy they say is an android and the Alien Cat and she knows a woman Arlerin who says she’s (Arlerin is) an Elf. There’s also a robot dragon. And there are dolphins! I got to pet one. I’ve never seen one in person before.
That’s all for today. I will post more when there’s something interesting to talk about.
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