To the Moon... and Back?

The lifeless lunar landscape lay beyond the small window of the habitation unit. Black skies, white mountains. No air to breathe. The surface was scorching during the day and freezing at night. Some might have called it hell. I call it ‘home’.

I’d never quite gotten along with other people. Even as a child, I never had many friends, and I always preferred being alone. At first, I thought there was something wrong with me. As I grew older, I realized that was simply who I was. There were people like that. People who preferred their own company. Who didn’t need others. Who even found the company of others exhausting.

I was a lone wolf. That was what people called people like me – lone wolves.

When LunaTix company posted its recruitment ad, I immediately knew it was what I wanted to do with my life. The company’s goal was to establish a functioning human settlement on the moon within a few years. For over a year, robots had been preparing the site, establishing power and a basic habitation unit, so we could feel at home. Sort of.

Then they moved on to the next stage – sending people up there to live and continue building the settlement. They posted an ad saying they were looking for adventurous people willing to relocate to the moon. The job came with plenty of downsides. The training was long and grueling, and the work itself was hard and dangerous. There was also another important condition – LunaTix announced that anyone who went there would have to stay for at least two years.

I didn’t hesitate at all. Earth was already too crowded. Especially for me. Everywhere I went, there were people. There was nowhere left to escape to. I looked at the moon and thought it was the perfect place for someone like me - empty. Nothing else mattered. I thought I’d be the only idiot crazy enough to answer the ad. But it turned out there were quite a few people like me, looking for a way to escape Earth.

I passed the selection process, went through the training, and eventually made the trip.

There were five of us. Along with us, the shuttle carried large amounts of equipment, water, and food. Once we landed, we almost immediately began building an extension to the small habitation unit the robots had prepared for us.

Alex died on our second day there.

We were outside, using a crane to lift a heavy panel. We still weren’t used to the moon’s gravity, or to working inside spacesuits, and we weren’t careful enough. The panel fell on Alex.

I don’t think the impact killed him. But it tore his oxygen line open, and by the time we finally pulled him out, he was already dead.

We buried him a few hundred meters away from the habitation unit. It probably would have been smarter to recycle the body somehow - on the moon, everything could come in handy. But out of respect, we buried him the way people did back on Earth.

That was how we established the moon’s first cemetery. It also served as a reminder of how dangerous life there really was.

Every few weeks, LunaTix sent another shuttle carrying food and water supplies, construction materials, and additional equipment. There were always new people on board. Some came down to stay on the moon, like us. Others were temporary technicians who came to repair equipment and returned to Earth on the next shuttle.

Launching things from the moon was incredibly easy. The moon’s gravity was only a fraction of Earth’s, so you didn’t need massive rockets, huge amounts of fuel, or any of the other dangers and complications involved in launching from Earth.

During those first days, we entertained ourselves by throwing rocks into the air. We couldn’t stop watching how high they floated and how slowly they drifted back down.

Sometimes I’d look at our launch site and think I could probably kick one of the shuttles hard enough to send it into orbit myself.

The shuttle from Earth would arrive and settle into orbit around the moon. We’d take our small spacecraft up to meet it there. We transferred their cargo down to the surface and loaded the shuttle with ours - usually technicians from the previous rotation waiting for their ride back to Earth.

Then we’d head back down.

It usually took three or four trips back and forth to move everything, but even so, it was still far cheaper, safer, and more efficient than landing the shuttle on the moon itself.

I loved heading out into space to meet the shuttle. I always volunteered to do it, and since nobody seemed to enjoy it as much as I did, I usually ended up being the one assigned to it. I’d always try to leave a little early, just to steal an extra lap around the moon.

Alone. Just me inside the spacecraft, with the vast black void surrounding me.

I don’t think I’d ever known a silence as deep and real as the one I found during those trips into space.

Our settlement grew. Another thing I hadn’t taken into account when I answered that ad was that, at first, there really were only a few of us. But that changed quickly. In the beginning, there were five of us. Four after Alex died. Later, at any given moment, there were around thirty people there. Some were permanent residents like me. Others were rotating technicians and service crews.

We kept building more and more facilities and habitation units, but our population always grew faster than our ability to expand. Even the empty moon began to feel crowded to me. I started feeling the same thing I had felt back on Earth. The thing I’d escaped from had caught up with me again, only stronger this time.

There was nowhere left to escape to. No way to avoid people.

One of the supply shuttles from Earth arrived with a surprise onboard. One of the technicians who was supposed to join the flight had come down with the flu at the last minute and couldn’t make it aboard. Since it happened so close to launch, there was no time to find a replacement. That left the shuttle with a few extra kilograms of unused cargo space.

Everything counted. Every gram was measured carefully, and LunaTix management couldn’t stand the idea of wasting perfectly usable cargo capacity. But there was nothing they could do about it. The launch window was too close.

I could practically picture the flight manager pulling out his wallet, handing a few bills to one of the ground crew, and saying:

“Go to the nearest store and buy whatever you can.”

That day, when we unpacked the cargo, we couldn’t believe what we saw. Between the water containers, food supplies, and equipment, there were other things mixed in - chocolate. Not the hard, tasteless chocolate substitute they usually sent us. Real chocolate.

Twix bars. M&M’s. Mars bars. Their shiny, crinkling wrappers almost looked absurd on the moon. There were bottles of Coke too. Salty snacks. It looked as if someone had packed supplies for a party by mistake. It was one of the best things that ever happened to us there.

From then on, the company made sure to include a few kilograms of luxuries on every shuttle. Things we didn’t really need, but were very happy to have. We called it the Surprise Package.

Every time a new shipment arrived, we rushed through unloading the essential equipment just so we could open the package and see what they’d sent us this time.

One shipment included a guitar, a harmonica, and a small keyboard. It was wonderful. We played late into the night.

But none of the luxuries helped. The more people arrived, the heavier the feeling inside me became. I started making a habit of going out onto the lunar surface for a few hours at a time. It wasn’t like taking a walk back on Earth. I had to wear a bulky spacesuit, and it wasn’t exactly comfortable out there.

But it was empty.

I’d walk about a hundred meters away from the settlement and sit inside a small crater that I secretly called My Crater. Looking at the sky. At the dust. Enjoying the silence. Back on Earth, I probably would’ve drunk a beer and smoked a cigarette there. But on the moon, that obviously wasn’t possible.

Every now and then, I’d bring out useless scraps from the settlement and slowly built myself a small corner there. A bench. A small shelter that cast a little shade against the brutal sunlight. A fence. None of it had any real purpose. It just made the place feel a little more like home.

The population kept growing. LunaTix became hugely successful. The company started selling seats on the shuttles for moon tourism. People would arrive, come down to the surface, spend a night with us, and head back to Earth full of stories. The company charged enormous amounts of money for those trips.

I remember one old billionaire who bought an entire shuttle just for himself. I had no idea how much he paid, but I was sure it had been worth it for LunaTix. He arrived alone, came down to the surface, took a short tour outside with us, snapped a few pictures, and left.

Whenever we went up to meet the shuttles, we also brought back small amounts of lunar rocks and soil with us. The company used them to make even more money. Some were sold to research laboratories. But most of it was sold at absurd prices to people who wanted to own a piece of the moon badly enough to pay for it.

One day, I was walking through the corridors when I found myself at the observation deck. It was the main attraction for tourists. We’d built a large room there with a massive window stretching across an entire wall, offering a panoramic view of the lunar surface. It was a beautiful place.

I loved that room.

Mostly because, from there, you could still see nothing but the untouched surface of the moon. No signs of human presence anywhere. I knew that would eventually change as we kept building and expanding, but back then it was perfect.

I rarely went there. Like I said, it was the most crowded place in the settlement, and the last thing I wanted was to run into tourists.

But that day, for some reason, I found myself there. A boy was standing by the window, his face pressed against the glass, staring outside. I almost turned around and left, but something about the boy made me walk over.

I stood quietly beside him for a few minutes, the two of us staring out at the open, untouched lunar surface.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I said.

The boy didn’t turn toward me as he answered.

“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

I was surprised. The few tourists I’d had the misfortune of talking to never talked about the moon that way. Usually they said things like:

“Amazing.”

“Look what they’ve built here.”

“Soon they’ll build a mall up here, just like in New York.”

That sort of thing.

But the boy had called it beautiful. He’d described it perfectly.

“I think it’s beautiful too,” I said. “Why do you think it’s so beautiful?”

“Because there’s nothing there except the moon,” he said.

And somehow, that simple truth felt closer to my own way of seeing the world than anything I’d heard in years.

“Look,” he continued. “Just craters and mountains and soil no one’s ever walked on. And that black sky… so empty.”

He kept staring through the glass.

“It feels good looking at all of that.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “But there are people here. A lot of them.”

“But they’re not out there,” he replied. Then he glanced at me.

“Say… do you really drink toilet water up here?”

I laughed. “Yeah. I know it sounds disgusting, but I promise it’s clean, normal water.” He still looked unconvinced, which I could understand.

We fell silent. Then he said, “I wish I could stay here forever.”

He shook his head a moment later.

“Not exactly here,” he corrected himself. “Out there. Living alone on the moon.”

“Wouldn’t you miss home?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I could always visit my parents and siblings. It’s not that far.” He paused for a moment, staring back out at the surface. “Just think how quiet it is out there,” he said softly. “I’d give a lot for that.”

I patted his head. I knew the company rules regarding tourists. Only rarely were they allowed outside onto the lunar surface. It was a pity. I wouldn’t have minded taking that boy out there. Even though I usually hated going outside with other people and sharing the moon’s glittering loneliness with their endless chatter.

“You can come back in a few years, when you’re older,” I said. “It’s easy these days. Lots of people come here now.”

“Will you still be here?” he asked.

I laughed. “Where else can I go?”

I didn’t tell him that life on the moon was always dangerous. That everyone there was only one accident away from death at any given moment. It wasn’t my job to give him nightmares.

He turned to me and held out his hand.

“Thanks,” he said. “I should go find my parents. I think the shuttle back leaves soon.”

Then he lowered his head slightly and added:

“Unfortunately.”

I said goodbye and continued on my way. It felt strange running into someone like me. I wondered if he also felt surrounded all the time. Too crowded. Too suffocated. I wondered whether he would ever come back there. And if he did, whether the moon would still be quiet enough for him.

Our settlement became a global success. More and more people wanted to come live there. We kept building constantly. The facilities became more sophisticated, more comfortable. In the beginning, we’d been satisfied with basic living conditions. But as time passed, the settlement slowly began to resemble life back on Earth more and more.

But I hated that.

I saw where it was heading.

Honestly, it shouldn’t have surprised me. LunaTix had never hidden its intentions. From the very beginning, the company had made it clear that it wanted to establish a functioning human settlement on the moon. I just hadn’t expected it to happen so quickly. Paradoxically, the better we became at building the settlement, the faster it grew.

More people. More buildings. More noise.

The very thing I’d escaped from had followed me all the way to the moon. There were days I felt I couldn’t take it anymore.

My trips outside became more frequent. The rest of the crew started wondering where I kept disappearing to. They’d ask each other about it. Sometimes they asked me too. Not that anyone really cared. By then, there were already enough people on the moon to handle all the work that needed to be done. The rest of the original crew and I had long since become something like managers. We barely did any physical work anymore.

It wasn’t like anyone missed me when I disappeared for a few hours.

Still, it seemed strange to them. I couldn’t blame them. People had always found me strange. But that was who I was. I couldn’t change that.

I felt like I couldn’t keep living that way. But I was trapped. Part of my contract said I wasn’t allowed to return to Earth. But even if I somehow convinced LunaTix to bring me back, I couldn’t really go back anymore. My body had long since become unsuited for Earth’s crushing gravity.

And besides, I’d already escaped from that place once. I knew what waited for me there. More people. It would only mean trading one problem for another.

I felt like I was in a prison. All the moon’s vast, empty spaces around me, and still I felt like being inside a can. I had to do something. But I didn’t know what.

The shuttle arrived again. I went out to meet it. This time, I wasn’t carrying any cargo with me. There were no technicians to take up to orbit, and we hadn’t been asked to deliver rocks or lunar soil either.

We called those trips Empty Runs.

As usual, I left early. I lifted off easily and slipped into orbit around the moon. Then, as always, I headed off to make my usual circuit around it, knowing I’d still be back in time to meet the shuttle.

My spacecraft drifted quietly through the void. I crossed the line between day and night and entered the dark side of the moon. Suddenly, the stars appeared in their billions. Glittering lights impossibly far away.

I loved that darkness. The pleasant, enveloping silence.

As the spacecraft continued its orbit and slowly approached the day-night line on the far side of the moon, I realized I had no desire to return. I was happy up there, wrapped in silence. The thought of all those loud people emerging from the shuttle and joining our crowded settlement below filled me with anxiety. Every part of me resisted the thought of going back.

Without thinking too much about it, I reached for the controls and turned. The spacecraft shifted course and slowly drifted out of orbit, away from the moon. I increased speed. It wasn’t difficult. The moon didn’t pull very hard.

It takes effort to stay. Leaving is easier.

I drifted farther and farther away. The moon had already begun to shrink behind me. I sat back in the pilot’s seat and smiled.

I drifted deeper into the black void, and I’d never felt more alone.

Or happier.