Personal Space- Return to the Garden

by William David Hannah

  Dr. Miron jotted down some notes. She looked puzzled. “Mr. Gunning mentioned that you told him, in casual conversation, that Dr. Yeardsley was having dreams. He indicated that Dr. Yeardsley had told you to be quiet about the dreams. Do you remember this?”

  “Dr. Yeardsley told me about her dreams. They were…well, they were a lot like the ones I’m having now. And they, mine now, are very troubling. I want them to stop.”

  “Is it bothering you that you seem to be reliving some of Dr. Yeardsley’s dreams?”

  “It’s bothering me because they aren’t Dr. Yeardsley’s. They’re…mine!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Farmer in the Dell

  Margaret was finishing her preliminary documentation and photography. Joseph would be back soon, she thought, and she needed to be ready. As per Joseph’s instructions, and concerns, she had her visor closed and was breathing only moonsuit air. She felt that she had much more to explore in this vessel from the past, but now that she had made a very important historic find, she could not see any reason to believe that she would not have many opportunities to return to this site. Unless…she put that out of her mind.

  Fortunately, the lunar gravity made standing easy. She waited patiently by the hatch to the Pickering ship’s airlock. She knew that Joseph could not communicate with her from any distance, but she wondered if he would call her when he returned. She was determined to brave the confines of Joseph’s PSV docking tube once again when he did.

  But the hatch door never opened.

  She felt another rattle. The vibrations unsettled her each time they occurred. Was it really true that, as Joseph had said, the ship’s engine could be digesting itself, turning it and everything around it into a very small black hole? She had put those thoughts out of her mind while she was working. The discovery of antiquities was her profession, and she was determined to take risks, if need be, to wring every bit of knowledge she could from the clues before her.

  This time there was a lurch, followed by a very gentle rocking sensation. It was barely perceptible, but she couldn’t ignore the impossible sensation that the ship might be in motion.

  The observation bubble was right there. She could ratchet open the hatch and look outside. Surely that would not disturb the site too much. She told herself not to, but the ship lurched, very slightly, once again. This time her hands were on the hand crank. In a moment she could peer outside.

  Except that there was nothing to be seen. The transparent material seemed to have been replaced by something dark and thoroughly opaque. There was no view of the surroundings at all. No crater, no moon, no sunlight, no returning PSV. The total blackness startled her the most, that and the groans that were now accompanying the lurches. The shaking, the rattles, blackness without, and suddenly blackness within. The cabin had lost its lighting. The displays were dark. Only her suit lights showed that she was still inside the ship rather than floating in space. But floating. Oh my god, she cried to herself when she realized that she was now weightless.

  ∆∆∆

  A short time later the lights came back on. The interior of the ship looked unchanged compared to when they had arrived and found power and instrumentation all working. Gravity had been restored. She was not going to trust that the ship’s atmosphere had been restored as well.

  The observation bubble still showed nothing but blackness. There was still no moon to be seen, or anything else. But there was a sound, coming from behind her. It was somewhat muffled through her helmet.

  “It is safe to open your visor and breath the ship’s air.”

  She turned sharply and almost lost her footing. She grabbed for a control panel to steady herself.

  “Careful. You’re still at lunar gravity.”

  The voice was coming from a 60-year-old man dressed in overalls and a plaid shirt. His straw hat made him look like a caricature of a farmer from a children’s book.

  “What…who…are you? How did you get here? Where are we?”

  “Those are all questions we have expected from you. You may call me Don.”

  Yes. She could see it now. He looked like Don, the cult leader. Except that now instead of loose, dark clothing and wild-looking beard and hair, he was clean-shaven with much shorter hair under his straw hat. And he was dressed like her memory of a story about a… farmer in the dell?

  “Don? How could you possibly be here? And why are you dressed like this? And where is this ship? I can’t see anything.”

  “Margaret,” his voice was strangely soothing, “you can’t see anything because there is nothing to be seen. You are in this ship. There is nothing else.”

  “What do you mean there is nothing else?”

  “There is no meaning to where we are.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cara Shilling

  Cara Shilling was the civilian commander of Moon Base Alpha. Alpha was mostly civilian but with a joint military presence from various nation states. She had called a meeting to discuss the “incident”.

  “Right now,” Shilling shouted, “I don’t care how distressed Jayden is. This incident, everything that has happened since his arrival, the loss of Dr. Yeardsley, this is unacceptable. Just to promote this fantasy about a lost ship?”

  Dr. Miron spoke up, “It was more than a fantasy to him, if that’s what it was. Joseph really believes, rightly or wrongly, that he was there, at what he thought to be a first Pickering ship. He also believed that the engine was creating its own singularity. We know that that is at least possible for engines of that type.”

  “And so you are telling me that a singularity took the ship…and the crater…and Dr. Yeardsley? All while Joseph was in his dinky PSV air lock, attached to the ship that disappeared! Gunning, what do you have to say?”

  “Joseph has always been a risk-taker, but he’s also a first-class pilot. He may have done some regrettable things in the past, but he wouldn’t have left Dr. Yeardsley behind. And he certainly wouldn’t have harmed her in any way.”

  “And the singularity proposition?”

  “This is what bothers me. If that is what was happening, and that part is indeed possible, it wouldn’t have taken the ship and the crater and left Joseph and his PSV behind in an area where there is no indication of a disturbance of any kind.”

  “And so we have a mystery.” Ms. Shilling shook her head. “I need more information. I need some of the best minds on earth to be helping us with this. I need more searchers. I’ve communicated with other base commanders. We need all available personnel. And I want that PSV, and the lorry, gone over with a fine-toothed comb. I want to know the identity of everyone who has ever touched either of those vehicles, every strand of DNA identified. Every variation, every deviation, from every other AG-EYE-Super and whatever type of lorry that is. Every government that contributes to lunar operations is demanding answers…and so am I!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Museum

  Dr. Miron paid habitual visits to the living quarters of a very bored, listless, and depressed Joseph Jayden. He had lived in these quarters with very little opportunity to escape from them for several weeks. Even exercise opportunities had been very irregular for him, and much of the time he had refused them anyway. Living without exercise or other stimulation in the moon’s weak gravity had turned Joseph into a weakened shell of what he had been only a short time ago.

  “You’re free to go. The powers here, and on earth, have determined that they can’t hold you any longer without any evidence of wrongdoing. Your PSV is being released to you also. You may pack up your things and return to earth if you wish.”

  Joseph had trouble reacting to this news. It seemed favorable at first glance, but he had grown suspicious. He was looking for a catch.

  “There’s no catch. Ms. Shilling sent me to inform you of this, since most of your communication of late has been with me. I suspect that Shilling has personal reasons for not coming herself. It’s been awkward for her to expend so many resources without comi
ng up with any answers.”

  “It’s been awkward for me too.” Joseph did not know what else to say. He stood up to begin to gather his few belongings. “Everything I had here was in the PSV. I hope everything is still there. It wasn’t much. We had to empty it so Margar….” His voice trailed. He was clearly broken, saddened, more than remorseful, but lacking any understanding of what had transpired.

  “So what do you think you’ll do?” Dr. Miron asked. “Are you going home?”

  “You mean back to earth? I have no home there anymore. I’m tried and found guilty. Everyone I know has deserted me. I didn’t have much of a home there to begin with. My PSV, my trips, they were my whole life.”

  “You will need employment if you stay here. I don’t know about your situation on earth.”

  “I didn’t have or need a job there. Why do I need one here?”

  “Everybody here works in some capacity. We don’t have resources to support anyone who is not contributing, even if he or she is relatively wealthy.”

  “I’ve got to go back.”

  “To earth, good.”

  “No, to the other side. To the site. No one has let me look at it again. You all just want to ask me accusatory questions.”

  “There’s nothing else to be done there, Joseph. Everything has been thoroughly examined…and searched.”

  “You missed something. All of you. I know it. I’m going back. If I’m free I don’t need permission. I just need my PSV. And some time.”

  ∆∆∆

  And so once again Joseph took his PSV to the far side of the moon, to the site he had last visited, a site that should have shown a steep-walled crater and a large but very old spaceship that leaked anti-particles and interfered with navigation.

  There was no interference this time. There was no crater and no ship. Joseph surveyed the site from altitude, looking for a clue, some indication that he had the wrong place, some indication that something had happened there. Or, perish the thought, some indication that Margaret was still there somewhere, looking for him, or sheltering in a lunar lorry that no longer remained.

  And then he saw the patch of green.

  It was a patch of green that should not be there. Not on the moon. And it had not been there just a few moments before. He was sure of it.

  The PSV was descending, at Joseph’s direction. As he grew closer, the patch of green became more textured. As it spread before him, more and more he doubted his eyes, doubted his mind. He must be having hallucinations after all.

  He set the PSV down just outside the cornfield.

  ∆∆∆

  Joseph stepped out of his PSV in total disbelief. The sky was still dark in the sunlight. And yet, in front of him appeared to be a field of green, healthy cornstalks, with ripening ears. When he stepped into a row his moonsuit indicators insisted that he was enveloped in a nourishing atmosphere of gases in earth-like proportions and at an earth-like pressure. Suddenly he felt heavy and realized that he was walking, in his moonsuit, under earth’s substantially stronger gravitational pull. Only the black sky told him that he was somewhere unworldly.

  “You no longer need your moonsuit,” said the man in the straw hat.

  Joseph could not speak in return. His mind recoiled and he turned to hurry back to his PSV, but it was not there. There was just more corn, row after row. He was inside a giant maze.

  He would not trust the instruments in his suit. He would continue with suit air and a locked visor. But his personal navigation records took him nowhere familiar. He was growing increasingly weary in the heavy gravity. After all, he had spent weeks in a cubicle on the moon. And now he was in a moonsuit in earth gravity, walking exhaustingly, depleting his suit air, his water supply, overheating. He could not go on like this. Against his better judgment he opened his visor and took a deep breath of sweet familiar earth.

  He turned to the man in the straw hat. He had so many questions but all he could say was, “Where is Dr. Yeardsley?”

  “Dr. Yeardsley is fine. She’s more important than you know. Do you want to see her? Follow me.”

  A few rows later revealed a clearing with a large, imposing building. He numbly followed the man into the building, and there in a huge room filled with antiquities was Margaret Yeardsley.

  “Joseph! … I’m so glad you’re all right! … Isn’t this place wonderful? I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven. Maybe I have.”

  Joseph was too numb to speak. The room was filled with artifacts from the history of earth through its histrionic changes and decay but including articles from the history of mankind’s first ventures into space.

  “Look! Here is Apollo 11, the command module, Columbia. It’s here and intact, or at least something that looks just like it. Over there is Friendship 7. And Gagarin’s very first space capsule.”

  “We are on the moon,” Joseph said flatly. “This isn’t a museum. It’s showing you what you want to see.”

  “But there’s the first prototype PSV. Aren’t you interested in that?”

  “I’m interested in getting both of us back to my PSV and back to Moonbase Alpha. That’s all I care about right now.”

  “But you would miss so much. So much that you need to see in order to be the One Who Knows.” The man in the straw hat and, yes, overalls, was speaking in riddles.

  “That was in the book,” said Yeardsley, "'The one who knows'."

  “Right now I know nothing, and I don’t want to know anything else. Take me to Moon Base Alpha if you’re a figment of my imagination.”

  And so it was. He and Dr. Yeardsley were back inside the base, back in the Sea of Tranquility.

  But Joseph was not tranquil. Not at all.

  For one thing, the base was empty.

  “Where did everybody go?” Joseph shouted several times with increasing intensity.

  “Joseph, please calm….” Margaret had become increasingly distressed.

  “Well, where are we? It’s not the base. No one else is here, and this is a crowded place.”

  “I liked the museum better. I want to go back.”

  Suddenly they were back in the museum.

  “I feel like a puppet. We’ve met the puppet master. He’s putting us in whatever scene he sees fit, based on what we are thinking about, or on what we like best.”

  “But there is no purpose to this.” Margaret was regaining her composure.

  “Where have you been?” Joseph asked.

  “I was on the ship, which wasn’t anywhere, according to farmer Don here. He said that there was no meaning. And then I was in the museum and you arrived.”

  “How long? How long were you in the ship? Before the museum?”

  “A short time. Less than an hour I guess.”

  “Margaret, you’ve been gone for weeks. I’ve been confined to quarters at the base for weeks while they searched and investigated. They thought I had something to do with your disappearance.”

  “But you appeared at the museum almost as soon as I arrived there.”

  Down the corridor and in an even larger room were the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, intact and gleaming. They belonged to ancient history, but Joseph suddenly felt a sense of great loss shared among many.

  “Why do I feel this way?” Joseph asked.

  The man in the straw hat had morphed into a straw man, like a scarecrow. “Because you have both a brain and a heart. And you have courage.”

  An attractive young woman clad only in a thin film of stars next appeared in this strangely palpable dream. “I am StarTat,” she said. “You must follow me.”

  Joseph and Margaret followed StarTat into a garden. Within clumps of blue flowers were markers, like gravestones or monuments. Joseph could not make out what they said, but Margaret said, “I know. They were in the book.”

  They turned and, at rest, stood Joseph’s PSV. Its canopy was open awaiting their return. The gravity was slowly lessening along with the atmosphere. They quickly locked visors and returned to suit air. Th
eir surroundings were slowly vanishing, and in a moment, they were standing on a barren moonscape. Margaret squeezed back into the cargo area of the PSV, and Joseph resumed his seat at the controls. But without further thought or action from Joseph, the PSV had launched itself into a translunar trajectory. At high acceleration it was returning to earth.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Nobody Home

  “This is very uncomfortable. When will we arrive?” Margaret was small, but she was beyond cramped, folded tightly in the PSV’s small hold, still in her moonsuit.

  “I don’t know. I am not piloting this thing. It won’t respond to the controls. It’s being controlled by something, or someone, else. I don’t even know if this trip is real. Has anything been real? It all seems to be taken from our thoughts.”

  “From our collective thoughts. You’ve been experiencing what I thought about and vice versa. You were even seeing things, or characters, I’ve read about. Can you tell where we’re going?”

  “We seem to be returning to the old automated launch complex I left from in PTown. I can’t raise anyone though. And I don’t know if anyone is even there. I can’t raise anybody on earth, or on the moon.”

  Sure enough, the PSV landed on the launch pad from which it had departed for Joseph’s last trip to the moon’s far side. No one answered from the control tower. When the canopy opened, and Margaret managed to straighten herself enough to walk, she said, “First of all, I need to get out of this moonsuit. And then I need to contact somebody. According to you, they all think I’m dead.”

  Joseph and Margaret found coveralls in a maintenance area. They didn’t fit, but they were comfortable compared to lugging themselves around in a moonsuit for hours.