Escape From The Moon
Prior to the dream about the red celestial body in close orbit with Earth, I dreamt about the moon shortly before that. The usual transport into shadowy realms took minutes and I was somewhere very desolate and dead cold. The others seemed to be there, too. A brownish, yet hostile landscape, showed to be an obscure location somewhere on the lunar surface. We were all in a structure, like a big housing unit built on the moon.
I looked around in confusion because I didn't remember how I got there. We were apparently living there and had been for some time it seemed. All our things were there too. I thought it strange that we had brought everything we owned to the moon but there we were, basically roughing it. The suits we wore to maintain vital functions outside of the dwelling were like regular clothes or uniforms that would cover our frames and provide air and temperature control and gravity leverage, making us heavier than we really were.
The air system that was providing temperature control, and oxygen, had broken down. Repairs were drastically needed if we were to survive. It was decided that we needed to get back to Earth and we had very little time. We began loading the shuttle. I was hurrying back and forth, trying to pack and carry out crates. I kept checking my oxygen reading. I was already on the reserve pack in my suit.
Dodo was upset and seemed to ignore our present danger. Mom and Rachel were out of hearing range and seemed to not grasp the situation. Dodo apparently had had some harsh words with a pilot of one of the shuttle crews back on Earth. Soon I discovered that the pilot was actually on the moon with us and did not intend to leave. Just as I was loading some crate, I looked over at Dodo and before I could warn him, he was struck from behind by the pilot who had gone mad.
The oxygen had gone critical, and the pilot was determined that we were all going to stay on the surface until we either lost air or froze to death. I quickly tried to get the last boxes onto the cargo ramp and the rest of the way into the ship. Shallow breaths and the stinging of cold began to grip me. I went over to Dodo and tried to shake him back to. I really didn't know what his problem was. He was struck with a foam noodle that insulated a hydraulic. And being on the moon, it couldn't have been felt as more than a feather. "This is no time to drama your spleen" I told him.
The situation started to look more bleak under the biting absence of atmosphere. I began to move slower, towards an empty pool bed. There the demented pilot stood. He had a gun and was going to kill everyone. I ran up to him and struggled with him to get the gun while trying to avoid being shot myself.
"What?! Are you crazy?! If we don't get the hell out of here, we're all going to die! Even you, you fucking moron!" I told him. The madman didn't seem to care at all about his own life, let alone ours, and still tried to shoot everyone. Finally I grabbed the gun from his hands. Already having no more resolve other than wanting to be rid of this insane guy, even if we were going to die, I had to take out the immediate threat and aimed the gun at him as he tried to rush me and grab it back from me. I shot him dead. That was the end of that.
I imagined what it would be like to fly back to Earth. I had no sufficient training on how to fly a shuttle, such was our only escape from the moon offered. We were trapped and stuck out on the moon if we couldn't get launched. At first it seemed to me that we'd only been there for a short mission and that we weren't there for very long. Then I realized we had been there for so long that we'd forgotten what Earth was like. Next thing I knew, we were flying through limited space and headed for Earth.
I remembered that I wasn't too thrilled to see Earth. Especially after seeing the way the pilot had been affected by whatever he imagined happened back there. We sat in silence aboard the ship and barely escaped but we were all intact. As we began our approach, I wondered what it would be like to land back on the planet that we had been away from for so long. I saw a very warm and peaceful blue. A little hazy where the biosphere shrouded the mass of detail below. It was graceful and beautiful to behold. The Bavarian Forest came into view. I heard yodeling.
I shook back to and navigated through an even plane with the curvature of the earth. I looked back to the others and asked, "Does anyone know how to re-enter and plot a landing course? Or even how to fly and safely land this piece of shit?"
No one answered.
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