Make IT Real!, Sander R.B.E. Beals [uplifting novels .TXT] 📗

LeeYooh then guides us to one of his moon-dwelling fellow beings. She is a tall, very majestic woman, by the name of Gaween. Mumbling something about having to do some maintenance on our disc, LeeYooh leaves us with her, reassuring us we'll be in good hands. Gaween has been born in the moon, and has grown up here. There is literally nothing that she doesn't know about it, so we are in for a treat. "Gaween, we've now traveled through six levels to get to you, can you tell us how many levels there are in here?", Jane asks. "Surely", the lady says: "But do you want me to tell you or show you?" Both my girls opt for the demonstration rather than the statement of fact, so Gaween takes us to what seems to be a large elevator. "We only use these for transporting goods between the levels. Site-to-site transport like your friend Kayim just used, is far more efficient for living beings", she continues. But that would have gotten us instantly to the lowest level, without demonstrating the number of floors that we'd be traveling. This elevator at least has a display of some sorts, and even though it isn't quite readable, it's behavior gives us some idea about the vastness of it all: as the elevator starts downwards with a barely perceptible movement, the display starts to change. But unlike our elevators, that accelerate to some fixed speed and then stay there, this one keeps on accelerating until it has reached the halfway point. Then, its acceleration is turned into a deceleration, to have us arrive at the lowest level with the appropriate speed. "I know you people can't read our digits, so I'll just tell you: we are now seven thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven floors beneath the surface", our hostess says as the doors open.

"Awesome", Valerie and Jane chant in unison. I just keep thinking that they had to have a completely different angle on elevator construction here. Back on the Earth's surface, engineers have problems getting elevators installed in the tallest of our buildings. Usually, these elevators only service a number of consecutive floors, and then you have to board the next one. Ours had just traversed those nearly eight thousand floors in record time, without any discomfort to us because of the breakneck speed it must have traveled at.

"Is there anything interesting down here?", Valerie asks. She's always in for new things, and being away from Kayim she desperately needs something to keep her mind off that fact. "Step right up", our hostess replies, and gestures towards the nearest door... We follow her lead, and enter the room. It is large like a classroom, but there the resemblance ends: the floor is far from flat, it looks more like a mountain has suddenly sprung up in the room. I briefly remember that riddle that asks why programmers wear climbing shoes to work, and chuckle. “Anything we should know about?”, Valerie wants to know. I tell her the corny riddle, and she is obviously not amused. Just a different sense of humor.

Back to that formless shape, that isn't quite as devoid of form as I first thought. I still can't make out what it's supposed to be, until I look at the ceiling, which is one big mirror that would be great for your average disco. Here, it obviously has another purpose, because from that very ceiling, a face is staring at me. As I point it out to the others, we all look up, but I cannot quite put my finger on it: Where, oh where have I seen this face before?

And then it hits me: block out all the finer details, and the features resemble a photograph that shocked the Earth population back in 1976: the Mars Face! At that exact moment, Jane comes to the same conclusion. She quickly tells the others, and we all examine the reflection on the ceiling in detail. Where the photos from Mars show something that could quite possibly be a natural formation that just looks like a face, there is absolutely no doubt here: the rock in this room is a face, plain and simple. I turn to Gaween, asking her if this face and the Mars face are related. She nods, and explains that this is a scale model that was made before the structure on the Mars surface. “Everything out there used to be two hundred and fifty times larger than the model in here”, Gaween continues: “But it shrunk a bit due to the wind corrosion on the Martian surface. Not to mention the ravages of War”. “War?”, I ask our hostess to explain. And she does: “Round about when the face was built, the inhabitants of Mars (who'd come there from Earth) split into two factions, that had very different views on what Life should be like over there”. She continues to tell that here on Earth the conflict was avoided, but the Martian population allowed it to escalate in an all out war. And their weapons even then were far more powerful than the current technology that exists on the Earth's surface. It took them a mere three months to change Mars from a flourishing paradise into a barren wasteland, where nothing could live anymore. Finally, a guy named Wahloo ended it all, by convincing his peers that all their fighting had been useless. It only forced them back to Earth, where they would have to rebuild their societies again. Although the war had now ended, the two groups did not want to continue together. One group fled to the South-America's (long before they were named like that), and later became known as the Inca's. The others settled down near the delta of the Nile, which seemed like a nice place to them. Both groups continued doing what they had always been good at: building in stone, because that lasts an eternity.

“The history teacher in school never could explain to me why the Mayans and the Egyptians both built pyramids”, Jane exclaimed: “Now it all starts to make sense!”. Valerie was more concerned with the face itself. She wondered why its features were so very worn down. “Surely not just wind corrosion, it couldn't have blown that hard, now could it?” Gaween reassured her: “No, like I said the face was built before the war. One of the two groups sought refuge there. As a result, it took quite a beating once the others got wind of that.” As an afterthought, she added that the face wasn't just solid rock, like Mount Rushmore, but that it housed quite a few halls and tunnels, and numerous people.

Next, Gaween took us up a few levels, where we entered another large storage space. Now here were objects that I immediately recognized: as a kid, I'd been glued to the tube when the Apollo missions were on. And now, I was standing so close to the first moon buggy, that I could easily touch it. “Did you collect every man-made article from the Lunar surface?”, I asked our guide. She nodded frantically. “You guys just came here and dumped all that stuff in our front yard. We had to do something!” I wondered for a few moments what NASA and the others would think, when they realized that the stuff they left had vanished. Gaween informed me that they knew, but that it all was kept very hush-hush, because they didn't want to alarm the general public. “They know it's gone, but they have no idea who took it”, she concluded her explanation.

The kids were having a field day between all that space junk. I even saw Jane boarding the Lunar Lander of Apollo 14. There was something oddly out of place though: next to the lander was a Douglas Fir, quite a healthy one at that. I asked Gaween about it, but before she could answer, Gina interrupted her: “Is that a moon tree? I've read about them on Wikipedia” Gaween listened to Gina's explanation about how the astronauts of Apollo 14 had taken tree seeds on their trip, which later were planted throughout the United States. One even was transported to Switzerland, another had been presented to the Emperor of Japan. “Yes, it must be one of those”, Gaween then added: “we found the seed in the lander, after we'd brought it here. Even though it had been in space for quite some time because the hatch of the lander had been left open, it germinated as it was supposed to, and had been growing here ever since. We've actually sacrificed a room on the next lower level, to provide it with a nice place to dig in its roots. We've even installed a watering system, so it would be comfortable.”

By now, we've all grown quite hungry. Our hostess guides us to the top floor, where there is a restaurant of some kind. It has a glass ceiling (or so it seems), so we can lunch underneath the stars. No Earth in sight, after all this is the far side of the moon, not necessarily the dark side. But right now that is also the case, and the absence of environmental lighting outside means that the stars are all that much more visible. As we sit down for our meal, a waitress comes to take our order. She moves ever so lightly, because gravity up here is decidedly lower than what we normally experience on the Earth's surface. The girls had taken advantage of that earlier on, when Valerie jumped over the Lunar Lander, filmed by her younger sister.

Lunch is like all the other meals that we've grown accustomed to in Inner Earth. Lots of fruit, stuff that tastes like meat (but isn't!), and delicious drinks. We thoroughly enjoy it, all the while looking through the ceiling, at the marvelous stars. All of a sudden, the ceiling turns opaque, and I look at Gaween with a big question mark on my face. “No worries, that's just the deep bird making its appearance. She explains that the United States has one single deep space satellite in orbit, that provides for a wide view of the Earth. It's trajectory looks like the surface of a ball of knitting wool, and that surface lies outside the moon's orbit around the Earth. So at times, it will soar over the far side of the moon, forcing the base to go to camouflage mode. After a few minutes, the stars are back in place. We finish our lunch, after which all three girls (yes, Gina too) inquire about the possibility of interfacing with the Earth Web. Gaween acknowledges that this is possible, and leads us to level 2112, and their version of the Internet café. I can't help smiling at the floor number, because it has been in my CD player often enough: just look up Rush's 2112, great album. Now that we are here, I couldn't very well not check my mail. Nothing special, the only thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is an E-mail from my publisher to inquire whether I have a new novel ready soon. I've been struggling with a severe lack of inspiration before the holidays, but recent events have completely obliterated this from my mind. I'll just write a holiday journal, because as they say: “Truth is stranger than fiction!”

After replying the publisher with my intentions, my job at the computer is done. Just as I want to switch off the system, a funny little sound reaches my ears. It is the program that impersonates an MSN messenger. Apparently, one of my friends hails me. It is Mike, my friend from London. He wants to know when I'll be home, so he can hop over. I briefly explain my whereabouts, and can sense the envy in his lines, albeit ever so slightly. Mike is a traveler, he spends