I promised more a while ago on thought processes. Behind the Prompt, if you will. This one went through a number of iterations in my head, and then what poured out was…nothing like what I’d imagined.
Odd prompt, from nother Mike: “The kids were carrying moonbeams in a jar…”
(My own prompt of “In retrospect, the arrow through the calf shouldn’t have been the first clue” went to Leigh Kimmel.)
Initial reaction: Cool, I love this prompt! No idea what to do with it, but awesome, can’t wait to play around with it!
Idea one: Kids running around in the backyard, catching moonbeams in a jar like fireflies. I may still play around with this sometime.
Idea two: Moonbeams = moon message transmissions.
Idea three: Moon beans, the misunderstanding.
Idea four, that I thought I’d be writing: A new light source has been discovered, but only works on (or is kept secret by) the moon. The mental image was of glowing mason jars in a moon cave, carried to careful storage on each handmade shelf by herds of children just old enough to be trusted. Because while preppers weren’t what the space program wanted, sometimes you needed to store up emergency supplies once you got there.
Here’s what happened instead.
***
They didn’t want preppers for the moon colony. They wanted survivalists. You know, the types you can drop off with a pocketknife and a water bottle, and they’ll have shelter built in a few hours.
Or you drop them off empty handed, and they find their own pocketknife and water bottle. You remember the type.
Anyway, there aren’t a lot of people like that anymore. When 3-D printing took off, it really took off. Everything you can think of at the touch of a button from the same pile of sludge? Building your own anything was seen as quaint. Suitable for hobbyists, or one of the neo-Luddites that shunned technology.
Unfortunately, the 3-D trend happened right as the lunar base needed emergency manning.
And it wasn’t like space was a popular destination. Not after the Zelma. Sure, there was a lot of nostalgia for the old shuttle era. But when a whole colony fails…well. Then it’s someone should go, but maybe I’ll wait until the tech is fixed, amiright? Those poor kids. Someone oughta make a law. What where their parents thinking?
Besides, that training program is hard, and few make it.
But me, I was raised by my Grandpa, and he by his. He taught me woodworking, basic engineering and mechanics, and which plants would kill you. I could make everything from knives to jam to candles. They needed people like that, people who could fix stuff. People who couldn’t resist the urge to fix stuff.
It’s not like there’d be kids carrying moonbeams in a jar to illuminate the habitat’s interior. You can only put so many light bulbs in space. Or boost so much weight in that 3-D sludge. They save that for printing astronaut food, mostly.
So when the call came to re-crew what should have been Zelma’s home, I felt that pang in my chest for a place that would value those skills, even if I’d have to relearn or adapt half of them. Grandpa has passed the year before, and putting in for it felt like a good way to honor his memory.
He’d have done that snort-laugh of his at the idea, then clapped me on the shoulder with a hand stiff with age and hard work. His way of showing pride in my accomplishments, from the first Pine Derby car to the first buck.
Besides, I was bored.
It’s not like I expected they’d actually accept me into the astronaut program. I didn’t have a formal education, or not much of one. My knuckles were dug in with grease no matter how much I scrubbed, calluses rough from the bow string, scarred from whittling Grandpa’s last Christmas gift.
I guess this time, they were looking for something different. Zelma’s crew had been carefully selected and trained, and it still wasn’t enough to guide them in without disaster. Why not go for the scrappers like me?
Later I heard the rumors during training. That the bureaucrats expected failure, just like they expected we could barely read. We were supposed to be the excuse to shut the whole expensive program down. Give it up for another few decades, just like we did after the initial early years burst.
People like me, we take that as a badge of honor. Don’t tell the bureaucrats, but we already renamed the ship from Penelope to Scrapper.
In the meantime, I’ll tighten my straps one more time, because the countdown has begun.
I can’t wait to prove ‘em wrong.
