​My first attempt at creative writing – Susan on the moon.

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My name is Susan, and I am on the Moon. I was born in the year 2143. Earth had been struggling with food for a while but once the population passed 20 billion it became dire. Scientists tried to come up with better ways to grow food but they were only delaying the inevitable. On my 20th birthday in the year 2163 the governments of the world decided that some people needed to leave the earth and find a new home. They chose the moon.

Sedentary jobs had taken over earth. Offices filled vacant farmers fields while greenhouses were built on top of buildings. The average person needed to eat 2000 calories a day to maintain their weight but if they lived long enough on the moon the reduced gravity would drop that number to around 1500 calories a day. The first ship launched for the moon in 2165 and over the last 20 years 6 billion people have had the pleasure of calling the moon their new permanent home.

I was on one of the early ships to the Moon. Before the Sedentary workers came here there needed to be infrastructure built to support them. Me and 300,000 other welders were sent along with enough panels to make 20000 geodesic domes to support all functions of life. We constructed many different types of domes. Domes built for water reclaiming, domes built for growing food, domes built for living, and even domes built for fun. Many of us died during the construction. It was hard work. When I signed my contract to go they told me the risks and they told me that i was crazy.

After the last dome was completed many of the welders went home. There was no point in keeping such a large workforce of welders when their caloric cost was too high. I was one of the 2000 that decided to stay and work on maintaining the infrastructure. Over the years not much has changed in my life. I wake up, go to work, go home, then sleep. Life is pretty uneventful. I don’t have to worry about buying things. Everything that I need is provided for me and the only thing I work for (and everyone else) is food.

The average day at work pretty much involved me going on EVAs and fixing various breaks in the domes. It was simple work and not much thought was needed. Many of us welders have been given pills so we use our brains less. The more that the brain works, the more calories it uses. Being on the moon the longest out of most of my colleagues I have felt the effects of the moon more than any of them. My skin is pale and my bones and muscles are significantly weaker. I am nearly reaching the point where I am more of a liability than an asset. Over the last 5 years the chances of me breaking a bone have gone up 78%. I have broken 3 in the last 3 years.

In my last few months of the job the higher ups were going through a big restructuring initiative so they could be more efficient. Normally my job consisted of getting orders directly from the top of maintenance but now I was being given a new boss who was directly responsible for me and my colleagues. My new boss was a man named Lee. Lee was similar to the rest of us who have been working for years. He shared the same lifeless skin and gaunt physique. Every day Lee handed us new assignments that were more or less identical to the ones we had before but this time they claimed they used less calories.

In my last few weeks of the job before I would be labeled as a liability I started seeing a new man. He did not look like the rest of us. He had skin that still held a tan as if he just left from earth. His body was still dense and his muscles were evident of having a surplus of calories. Everyday he seemed to observe us closer and closer coming back from EVAs and getting new assignments. My guess is that he must have been the replacement for my boss as he was reaching the same decrepit state that I was. One day he finally approached me and introduced himself. “My name is Paul and yours is?” I muttered out “Susan” slowly. As I flipped up my visor to get a better look at him he looked shocked. I could see the fear in his eyes. The fear of ending up like me, old and weak. The moon does not discriminate between old and young. It takes everything from you until your body is destroyed beyond repair. The only thing that keeps your body from being totally destroyed is your allocation of calories for the work you do.

In my last week of work nothing changed. It was still draining. On the moon there are no celebrations for being done with work. Only despair. Everyday I would go home and try to think about what there is after I’m done working but the pills have turned my brain to mush. I wonder if my colleagues are going through the same thing. I keep seeing Paul’s face everywhere. Whenever I see him on the news I try to listen but my ears have been destroyed from the constant pressure changes of the EVA suits and my brain is too slow to view the subtitles. On my walks to work I see his face on posters. The posters are different from the ones of our leaders but I don’t have time to read them because thinking is calories.

On my last day of work until I was considered a liability the only thing different was that Lee was gone. It seems that he became a liability before I did. Paul came to work that day to give us our assignments. My last assignment was one that I have done hundreds of times. I needed to take the plasma cutter to the top of one of the residential domes and cut off the old scaffolding from when it was constructed. I started my walk early in my day and it took me a few hours to reach the dome. As I approached the dome the big lettering “1A” became more visible. The domes across the moon are not given names but rather designations. I had never worked on 1A before. Normally this dome was reserved for the best of the best. Everyone knew that dome 1A was reserved for the Elite in our society. The Politicians, Celebrities, Scholars, Etc. As I began my accent of the dome I tried to focus on my mission. I did not want my final performance to be a disgrace. As I reached the top of the dome I worked my way over to the scaffolding.

In my last hour of work I was setting up my plasma cutter. I was given a plan of how I was to dismantle the scaffolding and I was ready to begin. As I started to cut the first bar I heard a frantic call from my earpiece. “The air pressure in Dome 1A is growing rapidly! Use your plasma cutter to make a hole!”. It was not often that I heard from my earpiece. Lee was always good about not calling us but he is gone and now Paul is my boss. I climbed down the scaffolding slowly being careful to not wrap the torch cable around anything.

In the last minutes of work I kneeled down and started to cut a hole in the dome. My earpiece was being filled with frantic noises but I was 100% focused on my mission. As I started the last movement in my cut I started to see the panel shake from the air pressure inside of 1A. Lights from above started to beam down on my location and I started to hear noises that were becoming as loud as my earpiece. As my cutter reached the end of its path the panel shot loose and everything went black.

I am happy. I was worried about what would happen after I was done with work but now I know. My new room is great. I have my own bathroom and my bed is much more comfortable than the one in my old home. The best part of my new place though is the service. 3 times a day a man comes to the door to watch me do my only task which is taking my pills. If I take them he gives me food. My new work is much easier than before. Each day I wake up life seems to get easier and easier. My body is finally getting its time to rest after all of my years. I don’t have much to do in my new room. I’m not able to talk to anyone and the man will only speak to me if he needs me to do something. Sometimes I think I hear him say something but he says it so quietly I cannot understand it. As each day goes past I try to think about what he is saying but there is no point in thinking.

I’ve lost count of the days but I was greeted this morning with an open door. The man had a friend with him and they gave me directions to follow them. The room that they led me to was large and full of flashes. They directed me to sit down in a chair and pay attention to the man in the black robe. As I sat down I noticed that everyone was looking at me as if I was the most important thing in the world. The man in the black robe hit his hammer and asked me “What is your name?”. I responded to his question by saying: I am Susan, And I am on the Moon! He then asked me what were the names of the 11,492 people.