HRVST Ch.10: Moonlight Inspires Longings In Gods And Men Alike
The moon continues to inspire longings but it will never feed them.
The moon, since its first fullness, inspires longing in gods and men alike.
In China an immortal, Chang’e, was turned into a mortal as punishment. She is so desperate to restore her immortality that she overdrinks a cosmic elixir which lifts her into the heavens, to her new home, the moon. She becomes a moon goddess. Her one friend is a rabbit.
In Japan, on a full moon evening, three animals agree to aid a poor starving beggar. A monkey gathers nuts for the beggar, which the fox steals but the rabbit who only knows of grass, sacrifices himself and jumps onto the beggar’s fire to cook himself. The beggar, an incognito god, marks the moon to remind everyone on Earth of the rabbit’s good heart. While the rabbit was inspired for giving, the fox became a thief.
The fox is a rogue everywhere there is moonlight, in the memories of man.
In the Incan culture, just as in Europe, the fox was a trickster.
For the Incan rituals, there may have been offerings of humans, animals, and goods but never the fox. The fox could not help himself, he tricked even the gods at times.
He dared to steal the moon but the moon would have none of it and embraced it, held it close and so tight, that the hug left marks on the moon, which remained in the sky.
In Serbia, the Fox fools a hungry wolf chasing him that there is prize at the bottom of a pond, pointing at a reflection of moonlight. He insists the reflection of the moon is a massive round of cheese. The wolf drinks his way towards the bottom, hungry to devour the moon-sized prize, and he does not drown but he explodes for his gluttony.
Moonlight has inspired longings in man forever, we reach for it but never touch.
In the Americas, the moon is a captive of tribes, who is rescued by antelopes but another trickster, not a fox but a coyote, steals the moon and drops it in a river.
In ancient Java, the moon goddess Nawang Wulan, bathed in a cool lake at night.
She had to take off her flying cloak, made of swan feathers, to enjoy a bath, and a man took it so that she could not fly back home. She married the thief and fed her family, by transmuting a single rice grain into enough food. When the husband discovered his wife’s powers, she became like other mortals and had to gather rice like the others.
One day, however, an immortal, the goddess Nawang Wulan found her flying cloak and escaped but it was only at night, during the day she lived as a mortal with her family and at night flew home to the moon. Her heart belonged to her mortal family, given of her free will.
Thieves and tricksters, under the moon’s light want much but understand little.
A Zen master, Ryokan, lived a simple life in the wilderness in a hut.
Despite the simplicity of the master’s life, it was enough to entice one thief to come while the master was away one evening. Sneaking in with the help of moonlight, the thief to his dismay found nothing. The master returned a moment later, and feeling sorry for the thief, observing, “you’ve come a long way to see me, you cannot leave emptyhanded”, and the master offered the clothes off his back.
After the bewildered thief ran off with the robes, the naked master looked up at the moon and pitied the thief, “too bad I couldn’t give him this beautiful moon”.
The moon continues to inspire longings but it will never feed them.
What will become of us, now that we have touched the face of the moon at last?
NOTE - For those who just read this and been dropped in the middle of things:
You are reading a chapter for the end of a book I began writing a few months ago.
This post is a chapter of “HRVST, the final part of a book, “Ledger Domain”, a mashup of history, mythology, and Sci-fi. Each first half is rooted in real history, and the second half is a sci-fi story - connected by an idea, theme, or emotional state.
It is being shared as it is written daily.
You do not have to know or read what “happened” to get something out of it.
For the first third of “HRVST”, we learned about the mythology of moon and sun, which a few centuries ago was treated as reality. We also imagined the beginning of a SciFi adventure, set in real places on the moon.
The next third will focus on recent history. (10 chapters in 10 days.)
The backstory of “HRVST” was written in Part 1 and Part 2 of “Ledger Domain”. Part 3 featured what the “captain” was looking for. Each part was 30 chapters in 30 days.
At the same time, in between, I will write pieces about the past and the future.
(Such as deep piece I wrote about a historical connection between today’s A.I. Art to William Blake, Da Vinci, & open source “Web” in “You’ve Got That Infinite Feeling”.
I shared with an acquaintance, an exec. chair on Stability AI’s board, and he liked it enough to share with the founder and others, which inspired me to pursue AI Art.)
And now for the future SciFi part of this Chapter, the rest of today’s chapter below
Luna, Aitken Basin, Armstrong Core, The Square
The captain, stared at an array of tactical gear, enough for a full complement of operators, and exhaled a small sigh of relief.
He followed a bread-crumb trail of clues for a friend.
Up the well from Earth by way of coyote to Luna, in the heart of the oldest settlements inside the ring of the Aitken Basin, in the inner core of the old town of Armstrong Core, on a street facing its largest public square, past the entrance of a food place that never seemed to close, through a door in the back, down countless steps, to an underground (in every sense of the word) social event, inside one of the bolt-holes of a compulsive op-sec veteran, the captain began to assemble his team.
First, a trusted sergeant, Tomassina “Tommy” Agrotere at the crater rim shipyards.
Honorable discharge but no pension. Tommy’s brand of street justice took care of a blemish to the unit and the service but that blemish was connected.
The captain did his best to keep Tommy alive and free. She started over on Luna.
Second, it was a unit specialist, Aventin “TwoTwo” Tsukoyomi, host of an underground party for first-responders and volunteers helping survivors camped on The Square.
As soon as his discharge papers came, TwoTwo took his pension and went up the well and did the near-impossible, he disappeared.
“I won’t ask how you got them but I’m not surprised.”
The captain took some gear off the shelf, hanging from a rack pulled down from its hiding place above the ceiling of one of TwoTwo’s hiding holes. Of course, clean.
“One question, Sir.”
“Yes.”
“What are doing exactly?”
“We have to stop people hired to find people who hold a card, like the one I showed you, or their loved ones. Those card holders were recruited to work for an off-the-books, off-chain project, called “Hyperion”.
It’s a rogue operation that born during the early years of the Space Cooperative. When some of them realized what they were working on it was too late. The last administrator for Armstrong, who was involved, objected and later died in an accident
No, it was not an accident.”
TwoTwo remembered the card, dull black finish, with “H.R.V.S.T.” etched on it.
“Are we intercepting whoever these people are, Sir?”
“We will not be going face to face with them.”
“If we’re not taking care of these minders, muscle hired by the project, then what is the plan?”, asked Tommy. She picked up a device, broke it down, and reassembled it.
“We’re going to kill the loved ones the minders are looking for.”
“Excuse me?” Tommy put the device back on the rack.
“Who else can we bring in, TwoTwo? Tommy said you could bring them in. We’ll need them all.”
TwoTwo looked at the captain, and studied his eyes.
“I’ll get everyone.”
“Good. Have everyone fall in, at some place new, tonight. I need to talk with Tommy.”
TwoTwo looked at the captain, and then Tommy one more time before leaving.
Tommy waited for the door to close.
Luna, Aitken Basin, Armstrong’s Outer Boros
“H-One, H-Two. They’re at South Boro’s local hall. We have eyes on them. ”
“H-Two, H-One. Copy that. Other units responding. Will converge at the main road.”
“We can round them up. Guess H-Actual was right. They’re all there, family members, some project members under monitoring, everybody on the list.”
“H-One, H-Two. We read a transport on approach. This hall must be their meeting site. What are they up to?”
“Prepare to intercept at the hall.”
“We see people still milling in.”
“Wait until you see the last of them, and bottle them up.”
“They’re doing all the work for us. We can finish, and get orders to escort them or whatever H-Actual wants. Time for some R&R.”
“All units move in.”
“Copy that.”
“H-Actual, we’re going in.”
“All units converging, all exits covered.”
“Doors locked.”
“Transport approaching pad, upper deck.”
“Move in, move in.”
“H-One, breaching main entrance.”
“H-Two, breaching auxiliary stairwell to upper deck.”
Luna, Aitken Basin, Armstrong’s Outer Boros, South Boro, Grissom Hall
“H-Actual, H-One. Breached entrance, Proceed to main hall? You read us?”
“H-One, H-Actual, lots of static, signal degraded but we read you. Proceed.”
“Copy that.”
“H-Actual, H-Two. At the upper deck, signal loss in 5 minutes, do we proceed?”
“H-Two, H-Actual. we read you, proceed.”
“H-Actual, we detect warm bodies in the main hall. It reads hot, looks like they’re probably waiting for evac. All of them.”
“H-Actual, transport approaching upper deck. We’re ready to breach airlock.”
“Where the hell are they going to evac to? I mean…”
“Keep the channel clear of chatter…”
“H-One, H-Two, we’re having trouble with this lock… request assistance.”
“H-Two, H-One, we’re coming. They’re bottled up, they’re not going anywhere.”
“H-Actual, H-Two something’s wrong, something’s wrong on our scope. That transport is coming in too hot…”
“H-Two, H-Actual, repeat please, repeat please…”
“H-One, H-Two, we’re having trouble with this lock… request assistance.”
“H-Two, H-One, we’re almost there, we’re coming up the stairwell.”
“H-Actual, H-Two, that transport, something’s happening… that transport…”
“H-Two, H-Actual, repeat, please… H-Two, this is H-Actual, do you copy?”
Luna, Aitken Basin, Shackleton Crater, Hyperion Project, Space Cooperative
Albert L’Orleans Necker spent as much time as he could in the grand solarium of Hyperion, basking in filtered sunbaths afforded to Shackleton’s peaks of eternal light.
He worked and waited for years just to be ready to begin.
It was hard to wait for the return of the HRVST, and prepare for another launch.
Sunlight to a private kingdom, perched on the rim at the center of it all, was a balm.
“Sir.”
“… Yes.”
“We have a report from our assets in Armstrong, the ones tasked with oversight of those families and those workers on the list.”
“What is it?”
“Sir… Sir, they’re all dead. So are all those people, all those workers.”
Necker sat up.
“What… do…. you …. mean?”
“… Sir. Sir, we received chatter that there was a meeting of everyone in a hall in an outer boro. We deployed teams. There was a transport that appeared to be for them. We believed it was an attempt at evacuation. Something happened with the transport, and it crashed into the hall.”
“Anything left?”
“The damage appears to be total. Nobody survived.”
“Anything we can recover to find out more? Nevermind. What have they done? Their attempt to evacuate costed them everything. They will not be a part of what’s next.
Let’s focus on preparing for the “Harvest’s” return.”
Necker made a right hand gesture over his the open palm of his left. A small holo map glowed into life over his left palm.
He studied the flight path of the “H.R.V.S.T.”
“Soon.”
Notes:
1
queen of the moon with stars in her hair, by tino rodriguez and annie swynnerton and nicholas roerich and jean delville and donato giancola and tom bagshaw and evelyn demorgan and diego rivera, dramatic lighting, floral tattoos, rich colors, smooth sharp focus, extremely detailed, adolf wolfli
2
beautiful illustration of a hong kong street in the rain and fog, trending on pixiv, artstation
3
Zaha Hadid city with dome and mosque by Hassan Fatahy in a Fantasy world and photo inspired by Where weird things happen by Daniele Gay on art station , le corbusier model on the ground inspired by Mining by Risa lin on art station
4
shanghai pudong international airport in year 2 0 4 9 interior, huge white space, many thin white columns evenly spaced, a corrugated roof that undulates slightly, silence, lightness, light, shadows, reflections, epic composition, intricate, elegant, volumetric lighting, digital painting, highly detailed, artstation, sharp focus, illustration, concept art, ruan jia, steve mccurry
5
closeup black and white photo from the surface of the moon, cinematic film still, glowing landing lights on spaceship landing on, stars and space in the background, fog and dust
6
3 d rendered visualization depicting flightpath over the moon including statistics, digital display, highly detailed, full color
Notes on names:
The Aventine Hill in ancient Rome was a site for ceremonies related to the moon. Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto, derived from “Tsuku” for moon, is a mythical figure from Japan’s mythology, who was known for his ferocity. Gus Grissom was one of the Mercury 7, the first seven astronauts in the American space program, who later was in the Gemini program, and lost his life during a pressure test of the Apollo 1 spacecraft.