HRVST Ch.6: The Shadow Of The Unseen
There are few places that haven't seen the light of the sun in billions of years
There is no eternal dark side to the brightest light in the evening sky of Earth.
There is no dark side of the moon. The closest endless night is in ancient pockets, billions of years old. At the moon’s poles, the bottoms of deep craters have been in darkness for over 2 billion years. The rest of this airless desert has known the sun with daylight that lasts for half a month.
There is no dark side so much as a side we have never seen.
In a slow dance that lasts shy of 28 days, the moon orbits around Earth, while it also spins in a slow pirouette that lasts 27 days. The result is we have never seen 41 percent of the moon’s face. That side of the moon has known sunlight but we’ve never seen it.
When the moon is a “crescent” right before it “disappears”, a part of the moon’s face, the “far side” never looked upon by man, has sunlight and a new day has begun for it.
Throughout the moon’s slow dance around the Earth, half of the surface is lit by the sun, heated to a blazing 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius), while the Darkside cools to a freezing -280 degrees Fahrenheit (-173 degrees Celsius). There is no blanket of air to soften the extremes endured by the sun’s electromagnetic fury.
Daylight is 2 weeks long, followed by a night that lasts just as long - a month long day.
Since the beginning, moonlight was the sun’s reflected glory, and some of it was shared twice. Some moonlight is sunlight bouncing off the Earth’s deserts, ice, and clouds onto the moon’s surface, which reflects it back to Earth.
The unseen side of the moon we called the “dark side” was a mystery since the dawn of man, and then one day it changed.
Our longing led to chariots that slipped free of invisible tethers to Earth.
The first grainy image captured by a Soviet probe in 1959 hinted that the unseen side of the moon was different from what we’ve known as “the moon”. There were none of the dark “seas” of ancient volcanic plains. The “dark side”, revealed by the eyes of man’s machines, was in fact lighter, there were no dark “seas” of cooled magma.
Ancient myths replaced by new models are a changing of the guard for our theories.
Billions of years ago, a massive collision to the southern pole of the moon, delivered a blistering hot poker to the interior, which melted some of the youngest parts of the moon’s mantle, a layer of its crust, into magma which flowed on the “near side”. Left behind on the south pole are craters. Nestled within the shadows cast by the craters are pockets of water ice, a prize for those who will return to stay.
The astronauts who walked on the moon, landed on the “near side” to remain in radio contact, just after sun-rise on the moon, “early” in the moon’s daytime. Mission Control took pains to ensure avoiding landing in the middle of a lunar day, like avoiding a noonday sun in summer, and leave before a lunar sundown’s deep freeze.
At the right time, visitors to the moon would be captivated by Earthshine, dozens of times brighter than moonlight, basking in the reflected glory of sunlight off the Earth.
The mysteries of the composition of the unseen far-side of the moon remain hidden.
Luna, Aitken Basin, Crater Rim Shipyards
“Lead the way, Tommy, we’re in your house. Who do we go to next?”
“Two-Two is here, he’s working the dark-shift with a nearsiders crew. He’ll know where everyone is, everyone from the unit who went up the well.”
“Two-Two?”, asked Aleksander.
“A member of the unit we served in. He double-checks everything, twice,” Tomassina laughed and tapped her left shoulder, “that’s why the last time someone almost got me, before I left the service, it was just a graze here, instead of a hole in my chest.”
“Tommy, we’ll need hardware. And new hiding places for Aleksander’s family, and for anyone else who’s carrying one of these,” The Captain pulled out the black card Aleksander gave him.
“Copy that.” Tomassina did a slow 360 degree turn with arms extended, hands pointed at buildings all around them. The shipyard would provide.
“One question, Captain, aren’t they going to notice him missing from his desk job. Your friend, Aleksander, he’s a high up administrator, right?
“We’re going to pick off his minders, and those who are tracking down his family. Once we do that, it won’t matter he’s missing, we have to hide them, until this is done.”
Aleksander looked around the shipyard, “They’re going to turn over entire neighborhoods of Armstrong, and some of the bigger outposts. Edward, I don’t think you have enough people to cover that much ground.”
“We won’t have to. We just need them to panic, play catchup and run ‘home’ to this complex you mentioned. Where the “Harvest” will be.”
“Harvest?”
“Sorry, Tommy, I’ll give you the short version. H, R, V, S, T. or ‘Harvest’ is a ship. The biggest secret project, until right now, in the Space Cooperative’s skunk works. Aleksander told me that he and many others were assigned to Luna, to build it but nobody told them what it was for.
There are three items on my to do list.
First, get Aleksander and his people to safety and out of the way.
Second, head straight for where the “Harvest” is landing.”
“And the third item, Captain?”
“Third is the original reason I hired a coyote to take me up the well from Earth. The S.C.’s books. The most important part of the S.C., and by extention, the world’s, financial memory went missing, about the same time a CME hit.
I followed a trail of breadcrumbs up to the moon.
The sentient ledger is here, and I think it’s where that ship, the “Harvest” is landing. And its creator, the one responsible for all of this is there. Someone everybody thought was dead, the stuff of system myths and legends. Albert Necker.”
“This is insane. Every part of what you just said. But sure, why not include a founding father of the S.C. while we're at it. How much time do we have?”
“It all depends on how long we have until that ship comes back.” The Captain looked over at the administrator, Aleksander.
“Soon.”
NOTES:
AI Prompt via Lexica:
1
Lunar queen, fine art, awesome fantasy book cover on pinterest, award winning, dark fantasy landscape, fantasy magic, intricate, elegant, sharp focus, cinematic lighting, highly detailed, digital painting, concept art, art by wlop and artgerm and greg rutkowski, masterpiece, trending on artstation, 8 k
2
Interior shot of a futuristic factory by Petros Afshar and Beeple, James Gilleard, Mark Ryden, Wolfgang Lettl highly detailed
3
detailed realistic female character cyberpunk wearing thick technological collar around neck, realistic, art, beautiful, 4K, collar, choker, collar around neck, punk, artstation, detailed, female, woman, choker, cyberpunk, neon, punk, collar, choker, collar around neck,
4
Industrial complex. By William-Adolphe Bouguerea, Jordan grimmer, fractal flame. Highly_detailded
5
design, symmetry, starship enterprise, borders, lines, decorations, muted colors, by jean - baptiste monge
This was an interesting publication. Thanks for sharing.