The Lunar Surface

She was sleeping. When she woke up, her smile revealed dazzling white teeth. Of course she needed no ticket as a member of the Space Force, but she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten on the train. As the nuclear powered locomotive rumbled over the lunar surface, she backed into a drab olive blanket, dread creeping over her face.

Captain Yasiin Willings checked all the specifications for the train: oxygen levels, food supply, time for exercise, all fed through the computer and spit out what needed to be completed or addressed.

Lieutenant Vashti Gannon staggered out into the passageway. She looked out the window. Her uniform still looked pristine. The craters of the Moon resembled defects on a large grayish face. Some were large and imposing, others small and unassuming. She tried to imagine what reason she had for being there.

The train track had been set up to go to various stations in a seven thousand mile loop. It looked like a child’s train set. But this train served a purpose pertinent to the safety of military American men and women in space. It supported all the other branches of the military as a launch pad for Mars.

Willings saw Vashti searching, wandering about. He let the autopilot and algorithm continue the train’s journey. He opened the hatch.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

Vashti’s brow furrowed. She stuck out a first finger, right palm facing upward.

“Why am I on this train?”

“What?”

“Why. Am. I. On. This. Train?!”

“Calm down. You’re First Lieutenant Vashti Gannon. You graduated from New Sweden University in Wilmington, Delaware. You studied nuclear sciences at the Air Force Academy. You have been on this natural satellite for two hundred and forty Earth days. You have been tasked with aiding me in acclimating a Marine space helicopter to the Martian environment.”

Vashti closed her eyes, held her palm to her forehead.

“Come to the chow car,” he said.

The place was decked out with vegetables, meats, pastas, cakes, pies, and cookies that showed the colors of red, green, yellow, brown, white, gray, and black, respectively. This array would regenerate every ten hours according to Universal Time. One robot fulfilled the task of a hundred enlisted Space Force warriors. The smell of the food enchanted and provoked.

“Just smelling that food has allowed me to remember—”

A severe jolt knocked them both off their feet. Once they found the floor, they locked eyes. At that moment, Willings knew exactly what had happened. He helped Vashti to her feet.

“Stay here and make yourself some lunch.”

“Alright, but is everything alright?”

“I’m going to check. You just enjoy your meal.”

Once Willings reached the control center, he saw red lights flashing like traffic signals.

“Rearden, connect to the command center,” Willings said to the voice control system. On Earth, Yalia Ceña, one of the women of the private firm BeyondGlobal, which worked closely with the Space Force, looked poised in her position on the hologram screen.

“We see that you have experienced an unexpected uptick in speed,” Yalia explained.

“Yes. What does this mean?” Willings asked.

“For now, you will be traveling near the speed of sound around the track. We will be doing everything on our end to get your train under control.”

“Is there some manual way of slowing it or letting it stop up here?”

“If you can find some way to remedy the situation, you are more than welcome to find a way,” she replied.

“Shit.”

“I’m sorry, there was a glitch in the transmission.”

“It was nothing.”

“Okay. We’ll be in constant contact throughout this whole ordeal.”

“Thanks,” he replied.

Vashti nibbled on the most delicious carrot she’d ever had in her life.

“Damn,” she muttered to herself. She then ventured to the control center. Or at least tried. A screen appeared overhead.

“Hi. I’m Rearden. You look lost. May I help you find something?”

“I need to get to the control room,” she responded.

“No problem, follow me.” The screen moved along the ceiling down the corridor.

The assistant kept close to Vashti so as to not out run her. She came to a corner, and she suddenly remembered where she was.

“I remember, now. Thank you,” she told the computer system.

“My pleasure, let me know if you need any help with anything else,” it replied.

Vashti smiled. She then strode to the doors of the control room.

The system recognized her face, and the doors swung open. Willings turned around and sighed.

“I thought I told you to stay in the chow area….” He gritted his teeth.

“Look, I think I can help.”

“Oh, do you, now? A half hour ago you didn’t even remember your name, or where you came from. Just tell me….Why are we whirling at seven hundred miles an hour?”

Vashti took a deep breath. “I think if we reconfigure the gauges, and deploy the braking system….” she began.

“You don’t think the computer already thought of that? I even attempted to do it manually. It looks like we’ll be going in circles for the remainder of this tour,” he replied with a sense of melancholy.

“I don’t think so. Captain, don’t we have thrusters on either end of the train?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t we use them?” Vashti asked.

“We could, but we would only slow to about six hundred and fifty miles per hour that will not help us achieve our goal of replenishing the stations with goods and stocking up the train in the process. Nice try.”

Vashti walked around the room. She then moved over to the screen with Yalia looking severe.

“Hello I’m Lieutenant…Gannon. Now, we’re able to keep the train running based on nuclear power. If we temporarily shut down the reactors, will we be able to slow the train?”

“That’s a possibility. A rather astute observation, as well,” Yalia congratulated.

“Let’s not throw a party just yet, ladies. Once we change the reactors, we might be stranded on this rock without any way of regaining the power to get this train moving consistently again once it slowed or stopped.” Willings darkened and became solemn at the prospect of either spinning around the Moon indefinitely, or being marooned somewhere. He shuttered.

Vashti considered the possibilities. Willings stood with his hands behind his back, his eyes closed as if he were deep in meditation.

“What we can do is send a message to the next station. It’s about five thousand miles from where you are now. We can tell them to expect you, and to equip their tracks with machinery that should take down the speed, if not stop the train altogether.”

“Like a roller coaster?” Willings asked, a quizzical tone in his voice.

“Exactly,” Yalia pointed out.

“If we fail at this particular mission, we and all the people at the station will be incinerated in a mushroom cloud of nuclear fallout. Are you prepared to be a part of that catastrophe? I’m not,” declared Willings.

Yalia sighed. “I know it’s risky but we can try to—”

Vashti walked to the controls and deactivated the reactors, thus slowing the train.

“What the hell?! Lieutenant Gannon, you will be brought up before a court martial! You will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Uniforn Code of Military Justice! You will—” Vashti kissed Willings.

“It looks like you both have things under control,” Yalia said, smirking. “I’ll end this transmission now.”