Lunar Sabotage

“I hereby call this meeting to order. We are gathered to discuss our plans to declare independence from Earth and establish this Lunar Colony as a self-governing body. As is laid out in your agendas, we will begin with arguments for the proposal on the table, followed by arguments against. We will then hold a council vote on whether to accept or reject the motion. Madame Secretary, please call the first speaker.”

A cameraperson captured the events in the central meeting room of Lunar Colony 1-A. From the dry, parliamentary fashion in which the Moon’s leadership council spoke, I might’ve assumed they were about to discuss increasing the humidity levels in the potato greenhouses by 2%, not the actual future of the place my family and I lived. The camera feed looked just as washed out and grey as the personalities on the council. I was distracted from the live feed on my wrist-mounted screen as my boss passed by, and I made myself look busy, wiping a thin layer of dust from the surface of my desk.

“Workin’ hard or hardly workin’, Grant?”

“Working hard, sir!” I called back.

“See to it that you go through the air quality reports from 2-C. We’ve been getting complaints about the filters needin’ replacement over there. If they aren’t meeting purity standards, fire me a memo and I’ll sign off on a work order.”

I nodded. I already knew the filters needed replacing. My wife and I saw our daughter’s asthma getting worse by the day. You could see the lunar sediment floating in the air if you looked directly at any of the phosphorus light sources. But human dignity and common sense weren’t enough for these people. Everything needed a paper trail, needed approval from higher up, needed to be implemented “the right way.” The whole philosophy that powered the Lunar Colonies was twisted from day one. This was why it didn’t matter which way the council voted today. This was why I needed to take action into my own hands.

I opened the interface on my work station. First, I opened an email containing an attachment from my boss’s boss. I carefully edited the contents of the message, but left the letterhead and signature in place. Then I sent it to the printer, and walked over to ensure the paper didn’t jam. The dice rolled in my favor, and the sheet rolled out onto the tray.

Second, I went into the ongoing database that logged the air, temperature, and chemical conditions of all the rooms in Colonies 1 through 6. All it took was to swap three numbers from the past hour. Oxygen levels low, temperature way up, and carbon monoxide levels beyond what should’ve been detected by the alarms, in the meeting room of Colony 1-A. Of course, I then purged the change logs for the database, to cover my tracks.

Finally, I grabbed a clipboard and took a walk to the nearest security checkpoint with the email I’d printed earlier. I knocked twice, and then let myself in. One of the security guards was asleep, and the other was practically drooling while staring at the screens.

“Heads up, did you guys get the memo from the VP about the malfunctioning carbon monoxide detectors in Sector 1-A? He said to be extra vigilant about lower relative oxygen levels, since there may be leaks or fires that don’t trip the alarms.”

I pulled the email off my clipboard, set it on the desk of the man who was still conscious, and walked away, hiding a smirk. I returned through the long walkways filled with cubicles to my own little slice of hell. While I went about my usual tasks, I kept one eye on the live feed of the meeting.

The oxygen levels and extreme temperatures I had falsified indicated that there was zero possibility of life remaining in that room. No one at Fire Management thought to check the live broadcast, and so failed to realize that the majority of the colonies’ leadership were still there. On the Moon, we don’t have enough water to use it to put out fires, and we don’t have enough oxygen to risk the O2-hungry flames spreading to other parts of the building, even if that means we have to risk a few lives in the process. Structural stability over all else. What we do have, however, is the void of space hovering no more than a few feet away anywhere we go on the base. And a cold vacuum is a perfect way to put out a fire that already killed everyone in the room, as far as the sensors can tell.

“Next speaker on the agenda is… the esteemed councilwoman Agatha Yvelte. Councilwoman, you may-”

“Hey, what’s going on?” interrupted someone in the room. Although the camera was still on the tripod pointed at the speaker, I saw someone in the background trying to open the doors, only to find them sealed shut.

Alarms began to blare, and red lights flashed. An overhead airlock, installed for just such an emergency, began unscrewing.

“Order! Do not speak out of turn!” declared the council president. His secretary tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed up. Dread curled his features into a visage of terror.

As soon as the remotely activated airlock opened, the papers on the desks flew upward into the air as the contents of the room’s atmosphere were vented out into space on the exterior surface of the Moon. As the room depressurized, the councilpeople began suffocating, pawing at their own faces in horror. The camera fell to the ground, knocked over by someone grasping for purchase on the desk nearby.

In the aftermath, investigations found I was far too involved in setting things in motion to be innocent. I’d never be able to get away with it. The security guards pointed out the person who’d hand-delivered the memorandum. They tracked the forged document to my desk via the printer. And although the change log had been purged, the log of me purging the change log had not been purged. My fingerprints were all over the crime scene.

But the fact that I had ousted the people in charge meant that a new type of person would be responsible for leading the Colonies. And I hoped that would be the type of person who’d change air filters before they started causing problems. Who listened to the people they purported to lead. Who’d enact a real revolution instead of a change in management.