Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash
The land runner leaped over the dip in the paved road, the suspension screeching as the undercarriage jostled about. Harold pressed down harder on the acceleration. The steering wheel whined as his silver gloves tightened around rubber. Through the windshield, intense street lights illuminated the way forward. It looked as if it were midday — but here, in this neverending cityscape, it always looked as if it were midday, even when the skies were cloudy. The clocks ticked, but time had no meaning.
When something burns in your soul, when it gnaws and chews at the back of your brain like a subterranean shuttle rat, there is no alternative recourse. There's no turning back, no second-guessing that burning sensation into taking a backseat while your conscious mind takes the wheel. The combustion has already started, and it cannot be snuffed out with ordinary retardant. It can only be accelerated, burning hotter and hotter until it supernovas and dies out.
Harold saw a strange painting at the art museum. It was "Starry Night” by Van Gogh, but it might as well have been something alien and fabricated. The haze of lights blinking on and off, increasingly overshadowing each other for attention, the night sky, the darkness — Harold remembered none of this. Before him was a canvas of blackness with swirls of colors. Like an ocean but darker. Clearer. At least, it seemed like what Harold imagined an ocean to be. He hadn't seen one before. He hadn't even dared to leave this terraformed lunar colony prior to today.
His foggy, opaque eyes were nearly hidden by the intensity of light all around Harold as he looked at himself in a rearview mirror. His flesh matched the illumination — angelic and empty. A halo around him covered the deathly look of his skin. He looked at his gloved hands. The other day, he held up one of his hands to the light above the bathroom mirror, and his skin was nearly translucent. He was fading, had been ever since birth.
Miles flashed by as Harold drove on, his foot pressing harder against the floor. Still, the illuminated haze remained. Decades of terraforming increased its reach further and further upon untamed territories of the moon. Night became an illusion, a designated set of hours in a 24-hour and 50 minute rotation.
Nearly one thousand years ago, mankind stepped foot on the moon for the first time. Those early pilgrims brought flags with them, collected rocks and dust, and went home. One hundred years later, they set up the first lunar shelters. These structures were crude and barely served as a safeguard from the elements, but over several hundred years, they expanded and evolved. Man firmly rooted himself to the moon, using it as a launching pad to encroach further and further out into space. But travel was long, arduous, and dangerous. Much like the early explorers in Earth’s history, whole fleets disappeared, their whereabouts unknown to those who waved goodbye.
Humanity fractured and diverged across colonized space. Those who remained on Earth to weather a turbulent climate were wholly unique and different from those who settled upon the moon many generations ago. The ebb of evolution adapted to these new climates. Languages changed, and words that seemed so important on Earth disappeared on lunar soil, where they proved to be worthless.
At the art museum, Harold couldn’t begin to fathom the significance of these historical works of art on display. They seemed so unrealistic and nonsensical. Who were these artists? Where was their home planet? What even was the point of this recreation of an original canvas attached to the wall?
“If you drive far enough outside of Lunar One, you can see the night sky,” another pupil said. His name was Icarus, and the vibrancy of his red eyes made Harold uncomfortable. They were like two menacing orbs punched into pale, sunken parchment paper. Ghostly white hair cut into the shape of a bowl sat atop Icarus’ head in uneven strands.
“At least, that’s what I’ve heard,” Icarus said. He reached into the pocket of his Mylar school uniform and withdrew a small packet of multicolored candies. With two skeletal fingers, Icarus popped a purple coin onto his thin, opaque tongue. He then chewed slowly, never once taking his red eyes off of Harold.
Harold took this as a taunt. Icarus was daring him, burning deep with those eyes and challenging to prove the validity of Icarus’ own statements. Harold watched another candy drop down on that pale-pink tongue. He then looked back at “Starry Night,” at the flurry of colors. The world outside of the painting was white and off-white — devoid of a spectrum. Within the painting’s frame, darkness accented the multicolored universe that suddenly expanded before Harold.
He stepped closer, giving into its pull. Prior to now, Harold had only seen images of space on holovid networks and in his learning bed’s simulations. This felt different somehow. There was mystique. Magic.
The faster Harold drove, the brighter the illumination that pierced through every window in his land runner. His eyes burned. Tears streamed down his face. Harold felt the white-hot intensity bubbling the flesh on his forearms.
He wanted to quit. He wanted to pull over and shade himself in one of the many dining lounges in Lunar One, pouring bulb after bulb of water over his singed skin. Harold thought of Icarus’ red eyes at the other end of the lounge staring him down. Between Icarus and himself, there was a sea of people, but those eyes refused to hide within the crowd.
Harold thought of his mom, who toiled away in one of the many terraformers for 12 hours a day. He then thought of his dad, a man who only existed in an image Mom had saved as her holovid’s background. He voyaged out into the stars one day in search of something even he couldn’t fathom. Was he in pursuit of the night sky, too?
Harold pressed his feet down so hard that he couldn’t even keep his head elevated above the steering wheel. Since he couldn’t see anyway, he shut his eyes, granting them a much-needed reprieve. Then, Harold screamed.
Within seconds, the land runner clipped something from the front, its rear spinning out toward the left. Harold’s body went limp as it flung into the passenger seat. He curled up into a fetal position as the vehicle spun several times around, hit another object, and leapt into the air, only to tumble down a ravine.
The land runner hissed and sparked. The cabin began to fill with white mist, and Harold could feel his lungs compressing beneath his chest. Eyes still closed, Harold threw a limp hand at the passenger door handle, pressed down, and pushed it open. He tumbled out into dusty soil.
The ground was cold to the touch — so cold that it felt like the searing supernova illumination of Lunar One mere seconds ago. Harold climbed to his feet, rubbed his eyes, and opened them. Light reached overhead almost all the way before him, nearly touching the ground in the far-off horizon. But there was a slit of darkness between the moon’s surface and the illuminated sky.
Harold rubbed his eyes again, and he swore he could even see something twinkling within that slit of darkness. He lifted one foot, then the other. Harold would run as fast as he could, no matter how long it took to reach the other side.
He had no idea what awaited him outside of the bounds of Lunar One’s purifying light, but Harold knew that — whatever it was — it would be beautiful.
Scott Waldyn is a writer, editor, and creator from the Chicagoland area. His work has been published in Drunk Monkeys, FIVE:2:ONE, Cultured Vultures, The Batman Universe, and others. Follow him on Twitter @ScottWaldyn