Luna: New Moon

Even before they officially welcome, the LDC planted the chibs on our eyeballs. We had ten inhalations free, then we started paying. We’ve been paying ever since. Air, water, carbon, data. The Four Elementals. You were born here, you won’t remember a time when you didn’t have those numbers in your eye. But I tell you, the first time you see the numbers change because the market has shifted, your breath catches in your throat. Nothing tells you that you are not on Earth any more than exhaling at one price and inhaling at another. Then they pushed us into medical. They wanted to look at my bones. You don’t think about the bones. To Jo Moonbeams everything is new and demanding. You need to learn how to move – you need to learn how to stand. You need to learn how to see and hear. You learn about your blood, and your heart, and dust and how that’s the thing that is most likely to kill you. You learn evacuation drills and depressurisation alarms and what side of a door to be on and when it’s safe to open it. You learn when to help people and when to abandon people. You learn how to live on top of each other, breathe each other’s air, drink each other’s water. You learn that when you die LDC will take you and break you down and recycle you for carbon and calcium and compost. You learn that you don’t own your body. You don’t own anything. From the moment you step off the moonloop, everything is rented.

You don’t think about the bones, but they tick away, under the skin, hour by hour, day by day, lune by lune losing mass and structure. Again, Sister, you were born here. This is your home. You can never go to Earth. But I had a window through which I could return. I had two years until my bone density and muscle tone deteriorated to a point where Earth gravity would be fatal to me. Two years. It was the same for all of us: two years. It’s still the same for every Jo Moonbeam who arrives at Meridian looking for the land of opportunity. We all of us face our Moonday, when we have to decide, do I stay or do I go?

They looked at my bones. They looked at Achi’s bones. And then we forgot about them.

We moved into barracks, Achi and I. The Jo Moonbeam accommodation was a warehouse with partitions to mark off your living space. Shared bathrooms, mess hall meals. There was no privacy, what you couldn’t see you could hear and what you couldn’t hear you could smell. The smell. Sewage and electricity and dust and unwashed bodies. The women naturally banded together: Achi and I traded to get cubicles beside each other, then merged them into one space. We held a little ritual that night and swore undying sisterhood over weird-tasting cocktails made from industrial vodka. Humans had been on the moon only five years and already there was a vodka industry. We made decorations from fabric scraps, we grew hydroponic flowers. We had socials and parties and we were the central point for the tampon trade. It was like a prison economy, with tampons instead of cigarettes. We had a natural social gravity, Achi and I. We drew the women, and the men who got tired of all the loud voices and the macho boasting: we’re the world-breakers, the moon-busters: we’re gonna take this rock and shake a million bitsies out of it. We’re going to fuck this moon. I’ve never been in the military, but I think it might be a bit like the moon in those early days.

We weren’t safe. No one was safe. Ten per cent of Jo Moonbeams died within three months. In my first week an extraction worker from Xinjiang was crushed in a pressure lock. Twenty-four launched from Korou on my OTV: three were dead before we even finished surface-activity training. One was the man who had flown up in the seat next to me. I can’t remember his name now. We recycled their bodies and reused them and we ate the vegetables and fruit they fertilised and never thought twice about the blood in the soil. You survive by choosing what not to see and hear.

I told you about the stink of the moon. What it stank of most was men. Testosterone. You breathed constant sexual tension. Every woman had been assaulted. It happened to me: once. An older worker, a duster, in the lock as I was changing into my training suit. He tried to slip the hand. I caught and threw him the length of the lock. USP Brazilian jiu jitsu team. My father would have been proud. I had no trouble from that man, or any other man, but I was still scared they would come as a gang. I couldn’t have fought a gang. They could hurt me, they might even kill me. There were contracts and codes of behaviour, but there were only company managers to enforce them. Sexual violence was a disciplinary matter.