by Dan Eaton
Moving through the cafeteria towards an open table, we saw some faces we recognized. The Stephenson family was there also so I gave Willie a wave as we sat down at our table.
“Dad,” I said, “you still have that silly grin on your face. What’s up with that?”
He picked up his drink and took a sip. He said, “Tang, the breakfast drink of astronauts”.
Mom and I had no idea what he was talking about so he proceeded to tell us about how during the heyday of the Mercury and Gemini missions Tang was touted as the breakfast drink of astronauts. He said his dad had told him about drinking the stuff when he was a kid. Tang had done well during the Apollo period, but had fallen off the attention of the US market in later years. It was still available in the US, but had a far larger market share in the international market place. When the habitat was opened Tang was on the list of foodstuffs for the same reasons it was on the much earlier Mercury and Gemini flights. It was a light powder that was easily mixed with water to make a tasty drink. I don’t know if it was any good or not, but Dad seemed to like it and considering how my reconstituted powdered milk tasted I was thinking it might be a good idea to give it a try the next time we were in for breakfast.
We hadn’t been sitting there very long when there was an alert tone from the overhead speakers and a pleasant sounding announcer came on with the following:
Good morning fellow NLH residents. It’s Thursday, July 16th, 2037.
In Habitat news this morning today we celebrate the establishment of the Northern Lunar Habitat this day in July of 2030.
In other news, it’s Ruth Tomlins birthday. Please stop by Environmental Control and wish her a Happy Birthday. There will be a small party this evening at 19:00 at the Cicely Grill for her friends.
Yesterday’s transport brought in a load of new arrivals. Please welcome the Burns family with Desmond, Cheryl, and their son Bryce. The Cherneski family with Joe, Wendy and their daughter Myra. The Dumas family with Cooper, Mia, and their son Adam. The Patel family with Abuyomi, Kiara, and their daughter Ananyu. The Schubeler family with Nolan, Callie, and their daughter Nina. The Stephenson family with Max, Bea, and their son William. These families mark a new direction in growth for the habitat so everyone please reach out and make them feel welcome.
On a follow-up note, Dr. Johnson would like to especially welcome Bryce Burns, Myra Cherneski, Adam Cooper, Ananyu Patel, Nina Schubeler, and William Stephenson as the incoming freshman class of NLH High. Dr. Johnson is looking forward to seeing the freshman class in conference room 419 at 09:00 this morning.
Deena Cortez and Toby Bark would like to remind everyone that they will be setting up to provide haircuts in conference room 419 on Saturday, July 18th between 09:00 and 14:00.
In financial news today, on the Lunar Stock Market shares of Mussconny Machine are trading steady at $15.67 a share, Mussconny Fabrication at $12.15 a share, Hotel Whipple shares are rising at $4.75. O’Reilly’s Shellfish Company is up at $8.00 a share.
We were half way through eating when an older gentleman approached the table. He was mostly bald with a neatly trimmed gray beard and mustache and had dark expressive eyes sitting behind a pair of black rimmed glasses. He said his name was Sandy Mussconny and Christine had asked him to act as the family’s mentor to help us adapt to life in the habitat. He ran the habitat’s maintenance shop along with several private businesses he owned. Sandy was friendly and had active, hands that were often moving to express some point while he was talking. He and Dad seemed to hit it off real well, but Sandy spent some time talking to mom and me as well. He asked if we’d mind if he joined us for dinner that evening to go over any questions we might have about life in the habitat.
Dad told him “Sure” and we agreed to meet at 18:30 that evening.
When I was finished with breakfast, I told Mom and Dad I was going to hook up with Willie and we’d find our way to school. Willie and his mom were still sitting where I had seen them so I joined them.
Willie’s mom Bea said, “Good morning Bryce. Did you and your parents get settled in okay last night?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, “I even managed to sleep okay last night, which I didn’t expect after all the time we slept on the way here. How about you guys?”
Bea replied, “I slept well last night, but Willie’s father tossed and turned all night. I think he was just all excited about getting a start today. Willie, did you sleep okay?”
Willie smiled and said, “I slept great. Hey mom, Bryce and I better get a move on. We have to find that conference room and Dad isn’t the only one who is a little excited this morning.”
Willie gave his mom a hug and then he and I made our way out of the cafeteria. We both had a pretty good idea where the conference room was since in the tour yesterday Christine had only mentioned one conference room. We found it pretty quickly on the West side of the business hub partition. We still had fifteen minutes before we were supposed to be there so we decided to walk around a bit and explore the Habitat on our own.
We ended up heading North in the business hub partition to the main hallway and then following that East. That brought us back to the cafeteria and passing from there on into Section 2. We continued on into Section 1 until we got down by Mussconny Machine and had to turn back. At Section 2 we turned left up the corridor that ran along the East side of Section 2 and then when we reached the end headed back West until we could follow the other hallway back to a door that let us into the cafeteria. Just before we entered the cafeteria, we ran into Myra and Nina, who were coming through section two’s mid partition hallway. The girls said, “Hi” and we said hi back and asked them where they were coming from. They had been out exploring also and now joined us as we made our way back to the conference room. Willie went into flirt mode which just bounced off Nina, but Myra grabbed Willie’s arm and walked off towards the conference room.
Left with Nina, I smiled and asked, “How did the loping you and Ananyu were trying yesterday work out? It looked like fun.”
We walked on after Myra and Willie as Nina said, “It was fun but it wasn’t as much of a workout as I had hoped it would be.”
That was it for me. I just couldn’t think of anything else to say to Nina and she didn’t seem to have anything further to say either.
Entering the room we found Christine was there with Ananyu and Adam. There was also the delicious smell of cookies in the air.
Ananyu said, “Guys, there are cookies in the box on the table. My dad baked them special for us this morning.” Ananyu’s dad was a Chef and must have got permission from the Cafeteria staff to bake the cookies for us. Willie and I made a beeline for the box and opening it, we found an assortment of cookies. I snagged a couple of chocolate chip cookies while Willie went for a couple of molasses cookies. They were so good. Based on my experience with the cafeteria so far I had to believe that Mr. Patel had used up his personal weight quota just bringing along the chocolate chips and other good stuff he used to make the cookies.
I said, “Ananyu, these cookies are incredibly good. Please tell your father, thank you for me.”
Everyone else added their thanks and Ananyu looked very pleased. I wasn’t sure what her father was going to be doing at the Habitat but I was hoping it was taking over management of the cafes and improving the food.
Christine said we’d get started in 5 minutes, so grab a drink if you needed one. The conference room was the standard 4 meters wide by 6.5 meters deep design like the other rooms in the original five sections of the Habitat. In our case, the room had several tables arranged in a u-shape with plenty of chairs for us to choose from. Then there were a couple of tables across the wall by the door on which were laid out some snacks and bottled water along with the box of cookies. I grabbed a bottle of water and another cookie while Adam started in on another of his funny stories. Christine had been just sitting there listening to Adam’s story and she must have found it interesting because she let him finish before she stood up to address u
s.
She said, “Welcome to NLH High. I know it doesn’t look like much at the moment, but you guys are the very first class and I promise you things will change as time goes by. You are going to have direct input into many of those changes. Before we talk about the future lets deal with some basics. Class at NLH High will run year round. I know most schools in the US have a long summer break that you are accustomed to but there are others that run on the year round schedule. For the Habitat, the year round schedule fits the situation we have here the best so that’s what we’re going to run with. There will be four semesters of eleven weeks with a two week break in between. In addition to those breaks, you’ll have off the standard US holidays. Class will start each weekday at 9:00 am and run through 3:00 pm with half an hour off for lunch. I will send out a school calendar to you and your parents shortly.”
Christine took a drink from her water bottle and then said, “You might be wondering about your teacher. Given the small class size currently and the lack of any qualified faculty here at the Habitat, your teacher will be handling things remotely.” Christine clicked a button on a hand controller and the display screen and camera at the end of the room lit up. On the screen was a woman who looked to be in her thirty's. She was blue eyed with a pair of wire rimmed glasses perched atop a pert nose. Christine said, “Good morning, Miss Gayle. Are you ready to meet your class?”
There was a short delay and then Miss Gayle replied, “Good morning everyone. Christine I’m ready to take over whenever you are ready.” She had a southern accent and sounded very friendly.
Christine spoke up and said, “Miss Gayle, I have one more thing I’d like to talk about and then I’ll turn you lose as I know you have a lot of work to do. First off class, a quick note. You may have noticed there’s a small delay between Miss Gayle and us. There’s a 1.3 second communication delay between the Earth and the Moon. It’s not that noticeable, but I wanted to make you aware of it. Now for the main event, I have a special project I need some volunteers for. I’d like everyone to consider doing it, but I’ll understand if it makes some of you uncomfortable and you would prefer not to. What I need is for the freshmen class of NLH High School to do a V-blog at least once each week. This is an after school project, but Miss Gayle may find opportunities for teachable moments during the day that can be worked into V-Blog later. We are very lucky in that Miss Gayle not only is a great teacher, but she also produces a very popular V-Blog of her own covering her interest in Arkansas folk art. I expect who ever volunteers to produce the V-Blog but Miss Gayle has already volunteered to advise you. I need this started up by next week, but for now I’ll turn things over to Miss Gayle so she can get you all going on your first day of school.”
It was a little weird talking to the screen at first, but Miss Gayle was very enthusiastic about the class and before long it just seemed normal to be having a class that way. I was enjoying class so much and I thought Miss Gayle’s accent was cool. Miss Gayle had decided that with six different kids from six different school districts, she really needed to know where we stood with each subject so she had us doing assessment tests to figure it out. That could have made for a long boring day, but after each one she had us take a break with class projects. She said she was big on school traditions and since NLH High had no traditions we were responsible as a class for creating them. She said we needed to come up with the school colors, mascot, school song, teams, both sporting and academic, and finally a code of conduct that we all needed to adhere to. So after each test she led us through a discussion and brainstorming session on each of the decisions we needed to make.
Eventually Miss Gayle surprised us by announcing it was the end of the day. I looked up at the clock and it said 2:55pm. We’d been having so much fun, I hadn’t paid any attention to the clock. Miss Gayle closed the class by saying, “Okay, homework for tonight is I want a decision from each of you on the topics we talked about today. Come to class tomorrow with your choices and be ready to defend them. Also, don’t forget about Christine’s request. Let’s discuss that tomorrow too. Otherwise, you all have a good evening and I’ll see you in the morning.” With that, she signed off and we were on our own.
Adam got our attention and said, “It’s still early, anybody want to go hang out in the cafeteria for a while?”
Nina was heading out the door and said she had a meeting to go to. Ananyu handed out the remaining cookies to us and suggested we might want to give them to our parents. She took the now empty box and headed off saying she had promised to help her dad. The rest of us wandered over to the cafeteria and hung out for a while. Willie’s E-Pad chimed with an incoming message and then he said he needed to go. We all walked back along the Boulevard, chatting about what we thought Miss Gayle had in store for us tomorrow. After we dropped off Adam and Willie, Myra said, “What are you doing later?”
I said, “We’re supposed to be having dinner with our Habitat mentor at 6:30 so he can tell us more about how things work around here. I don’t know how long that will take but I’m hoping I get some free time after that. I need to get with Willie and discuss some stuff about Gogo.”
Myra said “Oh, well, if you find a little free time I’d still like to try loping if you’re up to it.”
We had hit our segment and I said, “Sure” as she went on into her house.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dinner with Sandy
I found Dad upstairs on the computer when I got home. He said, “How did your first day of high school go?”
I told him about Miss Gayle and how much fun she made the class. I said, “It was strange at first being taught remotely, but I got used to it. What are you doing home so early?”
He said, “Well, I did as much as I could do until I can attend the Habitat Hazards training class. The first one won’t be taught until Monday evening so until then I’m much stuck just responding to emails.”
Dad worked for TransCor and with us relocating to the Moon, he was going to be handling a large part of the NLH Linear Accelerator project that was being funded by both the Habitat and SpaceX. The accelerator was going to be used to send large payloads into lunar orbit. That meant Dad was going to be spending a lot of time out at the Manufacturing module and eventually the construction site neither of which he could get to until he completed the safety courses.
Mom came home late. She kissed Dad and gave me a hug and although she was smiling I could tell she had a long day. She collapsed in one of the family room chairs and asked us how our days had gone. She sympathized with Dad’s day and was delighted to hear how well things had gone at school. Dad said, “So how was your day?” and then we got to hear about the problems.
She said, “Getting food from Earth is expensive, so the Habitat needs to grow as much food as possible but that requires room. The Habitat also requires people and they also need room. So it is a balancing act between how much room the Habitat can allot to food versus people. There are some projects underway to increase the space the Habitat had but they won’t yield results anytime soon and there’s a constant demand for more people at the Habitat to pursue the growing number of projects done here. The end result is the Habitat can’t support any more people than are presently here for at least six months. That didn’t sit well with the people back on Earth expecting results. This headache had been Dr. Belvert’s problem, but she hired me specifically to see if I could increase the production out of the Habitat’s hydroponic bays. I think I can improve things a bit, but it will take time which we are short of and the real answer is to add additional hydroponic bays which we can’t do any time soon.”
Dad gave Mom a hug and said, “Everything will be all right. You’ll find an answer probably sooner than later. In the meantime, why don’t we head down to the cafeteria since it’s almost time to meet with Sandy?”
On the way to dinner we saw Nina, Ananyu, and Adam out on the Boulevard loping together. They all waved as we passed by and I thought to myself, I really need to try that out. Maybe if th
is dinner meeting didn’t take too long I could see if Myra wanted to try it this evening. We got to the cafeteria and the dinner entrees were the shrimp dish that Mom had the night before, baked lasagna, and something that was pretending to be a pork chop with mashed potatoes. We all went for a salad and the lasagna. We had just sat down when Sandy showed up and joined us.
He gave us a friendly, “Hello everyone. How was your first full day at the Habitat?”
Dad said, “Hi Sandy, I think you’ll get a thumbs up from Bryce, a thumbs down from Cheryl, and a so-so from me.”
“So, uh, a mixed bag is what I’m hearing,” replied Sandy. He said, “Cheryl, I have a pretty good idea of why your day went the way it did. I’ve had many conversations with Denise about the problems I’m sure she discussed with you today. We have too many people stuffed in too small a space, we just barely have enough food and there’s not a lot of variety to the food we do have. We have a lot of work to be done, but when work’s over there’s not a lot to keep someone entertained. It’s a tough life right now.”
Sandy took another couple of bites of his fake pork chop and said, “What the place does have going for it is the opportunity to be part of history being made. There are also opportunities to improve your lot in life if you have a brain and can put hard work behind your ideas. The standard workday here is eight hours. Take away ten hours for eating and sleeping and you got about six hours of time a day that every worker here at the habitat needs to fill with something to keep them entertained. Some people work overtime at their normal job, but you can’t keep doing that day in and day out for months at a time. Some people find diversions like reading or gambling in a private game, or maybe singing karaoke down at the Margarita Mamas. Given the severe lack of manpower and the over abundance of work to do some of us have found that working two jobs is a way to stay sane. What I’m suggesting is work your main job and then find a second job that fulfills a need you have. It’s even better if it fulfills a need the Habitat also has. Let me give you an example, Cheryl you work all day with Denise raising food for the Habitat but maybe after hours you teach ballroom dancing. It fulfills a need you have plus fulfills a dire need the Habitat has for providing entertainment.”
