HRVST, Ch.2: The Harvest Moon
To Have More Light After Sunset Meant More Life
The rhythm of a world turned from harvesting the wild to harvesting crops.
There was still the hunt and the foraging but something changed. They changed.
They began with fire to protect life, and now they made fields to feed life.
The turning of the seasons including the gathering of what was grown.
The light of the moon was brilliant enough when summer fell into autumn that more crops could be harvested as dusk became evening. A greater harvest was greater prosperity, more life.
They counted the birth, life, and deaths of the light in the evening sky, marking how many times before it was again time to harvest from the world they were remaking.
They began to live in time. The present would pass in the past, and birth the next present, the future. They began to remember and to look ahead, there were stories, feast days, and festivals. Gods and legends sprang from their brows, to give it order.
This was not enough. They looked up at the moon at night, and wanted more.
Luna, Aitken Basin, Armstrong Base, Space Cooperative
“The man you seek doesn’t exist. You were right the first time, he’s not alive, he’s not here. You should turn around, and book the next flight down the well, and go home.
Tell our mutual friend, there’s nothing here. No answers. I’m sorry.”
This time, the base administrator didn’t break eye contact with the captain. He was scared enough by something to not look away.
“You know I’m not going to do that.
I’m not looking for answers. I’m looking for the right questions. Too many things have been happening, all at once it seems, and suddenly, some very powerful untouchable people are scared enough to help me.
I had a coyote arrange my flight up the well, nobody on Earth knows I’ve left, and so he won’t know that I’m here.
Aleksander, you’re going to help me.
Even if you say no again, I’m going to make it look like you’re helping me. Whatever you’re scared of will find out and then it won’t make a difference will it?
Our friend says I can trust you. Next thing you tell me to go home. Was she wrong?”
The administrator broke eye contact, and took in the view of his window overlooking the public square under the main dome, and his head dropped.
What would have been the pride of the city, rolling gardens and fields of real flowers, were replaced by tents and emergency shelters. Lines for food. The CME, coronal mass ejection, left its mark on Luna just as it did other inner worlds of the System.
“I’m sorry, please understand that I have a family.
For a long time, life was good, and all of sudden this job, this desk, this keyboard”, the administrator waving at his desk, “is a bed of nails. I have to decide things I don’t want to decide. Everything’s upside down. Do you know how hard we worked all of these years up here?
For years, he was an invisible part of things, unofficial, but that was some deal he made with the Board. We had no reason to protest, we got what we wanted until it was taken away by the sun. Then, not long after we learn that he wanted to go on.
Some of us have tried to stop him but none of them came back.
I’ve hidden my family with friends. The city is big enough to hide them.”
The Captain walked over to the window to look at the tents and lines of people.
“Just what is going on here? What is he doing?"
“It’s an internal Cooperative program, it’s not on any public oracle or chain.
The Cooperative made sure of it. You might be playing “cops” in Security Services, but some of your colleagues are playing “robbers”. Classified chain. For something called ‘Systemwide Transformation’. This goes back to the founding of the Cooperative.
He started it, and it runs, under the surface, under the cover of other projects.
The project is called ‘Hyperion’."
Notes: Text Prompt for AI Art image used in this post
realistic detailed profile portrait of a beautiful futuristic greek goddess Artemis italian renaissance queen in opulent alien glass armor by alphonse mucha, ayami kojima, amano, greg hildebrandt, and mark brooks, female, feminine, art nouveau, ornate italian renaissance cyberpunk, iridescent venetian blown glass, neo - gothic, gothic, character concept design