Blue Moon: Based On A True Story

Riley Evans couldn’t remember a time she had felt so thrilled. Not when she earned her master’s in physics, despite taking fifteen years and two horrible marriages; it wasn’t before her weddings, no holiday stood out.

She had worked hard, trained hard, studied hard, and underwent tests that pushed her limits both mentally and physically. She applied to Omega Properties every year until finally, she scored a short phone interview with the laboratory director, Julian Lord. It went well, and after that she endured an unprecedented twelve interviews with the rest of the laboratory staff and a new level of physical exams before she finally received her orders and a start date.

It took three days to arrive at the base, then two long weeks of orientation while the EH&S officer made sure she had an intimate understanding of all the ways the moon could kill a person. It kept her busy, but she was eager to get started.

She’d met most of the team and Julian checked in with her regularly to assure her they were excited to have her, but she wanted to get her fingers in regolith and take apart failed engines and help them find voids in printed parts and operate all the amazing instruments that were part of a failure analysis and materials characterization lab.

She couldn’t sleep and finally around 5 AM, gave it up and jumped in the hygiene corner, grabbed a squeeze of oatmeal and coffee, pulled on her jumpsuit, pinned on her manager name tag for the first time and walked out of her quarters and the several feet to the platform to wait for the rail.

The rail sped along its track through a tunnel that reminded Riley of the underground light rail at home. It stopped in front of automatic doors leading into a silent hallway with several sliding glass doors along the walls. It was empty now, but when the workday started, this would be a crowded thoroughfare.

Her previous attempts to visit the labs before her first day were always kindly deflected with excuses about how the top-secret activities prevented them from opening the lab until her orientation was complete. Julian would graciously lead her away and show her some new feature of the lunar base she hadn’t seen before. But today, there was no good reason to keep her out. They were her labs now.

She still didn’t have a key though, and her thumb, which worked for everything from opening her quarters, to buying her food, didn’t work.

She pressed her face against the glass to see past the dark amorphous equipment and saw movement on the other side. She knocked, but there wasn’t an answer. She checked the time, 6:14 AM. Maybe she should go to the commissary and have a coffee. No one was supposed to be at the lab before 7:30 AM, and she didn’t want to stand there in the glaring white space of the hallway.

She peered in one last time. She was sure she heard voices; and she heard what sounded like a chair scraping the floor. She knocked again, which met with deeper silence. She shrugged. Julian had assured her she would have access today, but maybe she was too early.

She headed to the commissary and was soon joined by other half-asleep workers going in the same direction.

She found a table next to a window that looked out over the lunar surface. Soon the room was full of murmuring friends and shuffling feet and the smell of coffee and pancakes.

Three people sat at the table next to her. She hadn’t seen two of them before, but the third person was one of her technicians, Jenny Fry. She considered going over and introducing herself, but the thought of it made her stomach hurt. She’d always been a little shy, and she wanted to make a good impression, bothering an employee at breakfast might be construed as butting-in.

Instead, she sipped her coffee and listened.

“You hear about Shawn and Darcy?” asked One.

“I heard they defected to Zeno Corp,” replied Two.

“That’s the third couple this month. I heard that billionaire—what’s his name—BJ Zeffer? He’s building a new facility and offering couples bigger living quarters,” said Jenny.

“And some recent hook-ups might be why,” said one, dripping with innuendo.

Riley had heard enough and was about to stand when she overheard Jenny say, “…I guess the new boss lady starts today. I can’t believe they’re adding more management levels. After Julian was promoted, he said he had to bring in a new manager.”

“Why didn’t they promote one of the leads?” asked One.

“I don’t know; they don’t talk to us much, and even though Julian’s been promoted, they still have their secret little meetings, so maybe there’s more to it.”

Riley stopped and sat back down

“I heard she was an old grade-school teacher,” said one.

“I heard she taught at some liberal arts college in Seattle before she was accepted into Omega’s worker program. I don’t know; as long as she stays out of my way, what do I care? Julian said she wouldn’t cause trouble,” said Jenny.

“Dude, she’s a manager; she’ll probably never show her face after her first day,” said Two.

This time, Riley was certain she didn’t want to hear more and headed out before Jenny responded.

She arrived back at the glass door. It was still dark except for a bit of light coming from a far corner. She tried her thumb, but it still didn’t work. She knocked.

A man she hadn’t seen before poked his head around and stared at her for a second before disappearing behind Julian, who came and opened the door. He looked at his watch. He sighed and gave Riley a hard stare.

“I guess you can come in. In the future, I’d rather you be on time,” he said. It was the first time he wasn’t pleased to see her.

Riley walked past him and heard a switch behind her. The lights came up to reveal an open, white, clean laboratory and several instruments for materials evaluation and failure analysis. Riley forgot the strange attitude as excitement bubbled up her spine.

“Oh, we have the new table-top TEM!” she said, a little loud. She giggled and turned to Julian. His face was rigid for a split second, then he gave her an indulgent smile. The man Riley had seen earlier poked his head out from what she could now see was an office door. Two others followed him.

“Riley, I’d like to introduce you to your lab-leads: this is Victor Ruiz, Reginald Smith, and Sherry MacQuoid.”

As he said their names, each of them waved or nodded at Riley. None of them offered a hand or a comment.

Riley wasn’t sure what to do for a beat; she recovered and held out her hand to each one.

“So nice to meet each of you, and I’m looking forward to working with you. I’ve wanted to work here in this lab for as long as I can remember, she gushed out the words; sounding like a kid at her first job.

“Nice to meet you,” said Sherry.

“Everyone calls me Reg,” said Reginald.

Riley reached towards Victor, but he was already turning to leave.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Victor; if you could wait, I was planning for us to meet for a few minutes before the others get here,” I said to his back.

“Sorry, gotta go do something for the boss.” Victor said without turning around.

“Oh, don’t mind him; he’s a little hard to get to know at first, but he’ll come around,” said Sherry.

“Ya, he took two weeks to speak to me when I first started—he has trust issues, but we all work around it,” added Reg.

“He’s brilliant,” said Julian. “Everyone here is the cream of the crop, of course; Omega only hires the best. But Victor is special.”

Riley wasn’t sure what to make of the scene. Julian was her boss, but this was her lab and her team. She let it go. She didn’t want there to be any awkwardness on her first day.

“Well, if you could show me where my desk is, I’d like to have a quick meeting with you before the others get here,” Riley said.

Reg and Sherry turned to Julian with questions on their faces.

“Well, you have it under control. Come see me around one, um—to catch up,” Julian said. And before she or the others could stop him, Julian was out the door and gone.

No one spoke. Riley looked from Reg to Sherry, expecting them to show her to her desk.

Sherry recovered first. “You’re a manager, so you don’t have a desk here. I assume you have one in the tower with Julian?”

“Not that I know of,” Riley said.

By now, Reg had lost interest in the conversation and Riley. He headed over to a large section of the lab where the mechanical testing equipment was located.

“That looks like an office,” I said, pointing at the room they’d all exited.

“Ya, no, that’s our break room,” said Sherry.

Sherry continued to stand in front of Riley, her head tilted and a mild smile on her face. She shrugged and walked over to one of several desks that were lined up on the far side of the room and sat at her computer, Riley apparently forgotten.

Riley wasn’t sure what to do. She followed Sherry and looked over the desks there; they were all obviously occupied.

Riley, determined not to be discouraged, strolled to the Mechanical Test Area. Reg was sitting at a desk, pecking with two fingers at his computer keyboard. He didn’t look up. “Gotta answer emails,” he mumbled.

Riley gave him an encouraging smile and pointed at the floor to ceiling test frame. She was excited to see that it was the newest model. In a tall cabinet next to it were stored the test fixtures. She went over to check them out when suddenly, Reginald was standing in front of her.

“Don’t touch those—they’re expensive—we don’t want people handling them. Don’t want them broken or dropped,” he said. He tried to lessen the implication that she was clumsy with a smile.

“You understand, right sweetheart,” he added.

Riley was too shocked to respond. “Um, oh, well, no, sorry,” she said. But she let the insult go. At least he was standing and talking to her.

“Now that you’re here, I’d like to chat about…”

“Sorry, I have to go,” Reg turned and went back to his computer and his pecking.

Riley frowned but walked away. She would have to talk to Julian about this. If Reg, Sherry, and Victor were her leads, she wondered what kind of reception she would get from the rest of the team.

People started filing in and heading to their desks and computers. For the first hour, staff ‘checked email’. Riley went around and quietly introduced herself. They were all polite, but indifferent.

There was a hum of quiet and productive activity after that. Riley wandered from one end of the lab to the other, looking for something to do and a place to set up. Tucked into a forgotten corner stood an older electron microscope; a model she was familiar with. She found some old samples in a cabinet and spent the morning refreshing her knowledge of the machine. She was surprised how fast the time passed when at noon a bell rang throughout the lab.

“Lunch,” said Sherry as she passed Riley on her way out. Everyone filed out behind her, and once again Riley stood alone in the silence. This was going to be harder than she thought.

The next several weeks went the same. She showed up early and had to wait for someone to let her in. No one gave her a desk or office. She put up a roster of duties on the wall next to the glass door, but after the initial discussion, the team ignored it. She rarely saw Victor.

Whenever she gave assignments, the technicians would ask their leads for approval, in front of her. If she tried to arrange meetings, most of them refused to show up. Victor said they were a waste of his time. And no matter how nicely she asked him not to, Reg continued to call her ‘Sweetheart.’ The one time she had tried to talk to Julian about her troubles, he had told her she had to be patient; they would get used to her and everything would be fine.

Victor was the worst. He rarely showed up at all, and when he did, if she asked where he’d been, he insisted he’d arrived earlier than anyone and was free to leave. Riley knew better.

The last time they’d talked, he told Riley, “You’re our manager; you aren’t even supposed to be here. Your job is to help us, and you stay out of our way unless we need you, and we will tell you when that is. I’d appreciate it if you would stay out of my way and let me do my job.”

Riley didn’t know what to say. She’d mentioned to Julian that she rarely saw Victor and that Reg and Sherry disappeared regularly, only to reappear seemingly out of nowhere and insist they’d been at their desks or working in the lab the whole time.

This had to change. She had no idea what Victor did. Reg was incompetent, and Sherry ran her portion of the lab well, but ignored Riley, including hiring a tech from maintenance without telling her.

Six months later, it was time for performance reviews. This was Riley’s opportunity to push back, to let them know where she needed them to improve. But when she submitted her reports, things got worse. So much worse in fact that when she fired Reginald, Julian came back and told her she wasn’t there to fire people. She had to let Reg back, and he kept his lead status.

Riley couldn’t quit. Everyone on the base had to work, and people who were laid off or fired had to wait in crowded temporary housing until the next shuttle supply run back to Earth.

Riley wasn’t an aggressive or assertive person. She was an engineer who loved to chase down solutions to why a thing failed. She never wanted to be a manager; it was the job that got her to the moon.

Riley had a few of her own projects despite the lead’s objections. She spent most of her time at her desk in a back corner and waited for everyone to leave to work; it was easier than arguing with them. One late afternoon, she was doing supply inventory and standing outside the line of sight of the door when Victor walked in. He looked furtively from side to side but didn’t see her. Riley stepped back behind the supply cabinet and watched.

With a large box under his arm, he walked up to the wall and tapped his fingers on a keypad she’d never seen before. He stood there for a second, waiting for the wall to slide open, and disappeared into the darkness. Riley didn’t give herself time to change her mind. She sneaked in after him as the wall closed behind her.

She stood for a moment in total darkness. From what she could tell before the wall closed, she was standing in a small hallway, and in front of her were narrow stairs going down.

It wasn’t completely dark though, and after another minute, her eyes adjusted and she could make out the stairs and movement at the bottom. There was railing on one side and a wall on the other, so she was able to sneak down the first few steps without being noticed.

When she reached the last step, she pressed herself against the wall and slowly turned her head around the corner to see what was going on.

She looked into a long, narrow room full of glass-top caskets, or that’s what they looked like at first. Victor was standing at a workbench, opening his box and removing electronics and cables. Julian was working on a body laid out on an operating table, its chest flayed open, its organs carefully lined up along a cold stainless steel tray.

“This one is ready to close up. Victor, finish it, and I’ll get Larry set up in the cryo,” said Julian.

The caskets were all attached to a chain-belt, and a loud clanging sounded as they cycled forward. Reg and Sherry came out from behind one of them and helped Julian load another body. This explained their daily vanishing acts. Victor stood over the person on the table and meticulously, artfully, returned all but one of the organs and closed up the wounds. A monitor with cables snaking from the body beeped, indicating that the person was still alive.

Riley jerked back and held her hands tight over her mouth; trying not to scream. She looked up at the stairs that were swallowed by the dark wall. She had to get away; she had to tell someone. She turned to take the first step when she heard a deep sigh behind her.

“You couldn’t let it go; you had to stick your nose where it didn’t belong,” Sherry said behind her.

Reg grabbed her arms. “Come with me sweetheart, we have a cozy bed for you; it’ll be alright.”

Sherry stuck a needle in Riley’s arm, and as the world faded out, she heard Victor say, “See, I told you, she had to go. She created a hostile work environment.”