If We Send One Man to the Moon

2004-05-12 at 12:40 a.m.

This is a story I wrote a year ago, called "If we can send one man to the moon, why can't we send them all" Yes, this is compensation for me not updating for so long. Please read it.

Shauna pressed her hands against the cold glass of her hotel bedroom. The lightening brightening the sky at intervals seemed to electrify her. Every time the thunder shook, she could feel the metallic rings in her ears vibrate. The glass seemed to suddenly glow burning hot and ice cold at the same time. All and all, it was the same she had felt in the two years of her dating Leon.

For days and sometimes weeks she would feel giddy with him. It reminded her of a whirlwind college romance. Random trips when they would call her grandmother to watch their cat and spend the weekend by the coast, watching sea gulls and kicking at the surf. Reminded of those days, Shauna walked away from the window, staring at the double bed she had spent the last two nights alone in. She felt terribly guilty about the expense, and the reason she was in D.C. to begin with, but not guilty enough to change her mind. After all, a betrayal was a betrayal, and she was not inclined to forgive Leon for his mistakes, no matter how self-righteous he felt.

Thanks to the new world order, as she remembered one news commentator remark (before he was replaced by a woman), she had gotten justification for her betrayal. Leon would be going up in the next space shuttle destined for the USA moon colony, La Lorette. She had worked in the gender relations department of Demi Mondes for five years before the take over, and found her position, before a point of ridicule to her male friends, one of great power in the new world order. Shauna decided to sleep on her thoughts, because although she could not find a twinge of guilt for sending Leon against his will into outer space, she was a bit tired after all the paperwork involved.

Shauna woke up early, excited for the day ahead. She was not required at the launch site until early evening, so she choose to go on a guided tour through the Museum de Ruelle. The beginning was very boring, all about the way America was founded, and the founding fathers. However as the 20 woman group turned into the last corridor, Shauna began to pay more attention. The last ten years of American history by far was her favorite.

�In 2004 the independent sponsors of Demi Mondes began organizing with the US government to start a space station where people could easily cohabit. The US provided the grounds and experienced professionals needed, and Demi Mondes provided the 243 billion dollars needed to finish the project. The Space station, la Lorette was finished in a record breaking 7 years.

Soon after Demi Mondes sent the first civilians to the space station, the United States president at that time, Julian Cavili, attempted to break contract with Demi and extract 20 billion dollars from their station in supplies. In the only completely non-violent exchange of government in the history of Earth, Demi Mondes took over the US, and began organizing our government into what it is today. Dr. Juanita Santos was voted into office by a surprising 70 percent of voters, and began phase two of Demi Mondes plan to colonize outer space.�

This part of history always made Shauna wonder if she would ever see her name in the history books. She had been the leader of a 500 thousand person team bent of finding humane ways to decrease over population problems. She remembered the key chain she had at that time, her house key separated from Leon�s by a fob that said, �If we can send one man to the moon, why can�t we send them all?� One of her employees had given it to her the day Leon had broken up with her over her office speaker phone. Shauna never thought that small key chain would inspire 500 thousand people to find one guaranteed way to resolve the population problem. To date, Demi Mondes gender relation department had send 2 million men into outer space. Of the 220 thousand heterosexual female employees working on her team, 200 thousand had chosen to send their life partners to outer space. Of the 200 thousand males, all but three had left. Men saw space as a place to explore and an opportunity to become a part of history. Ads saying that anyone could be a conquistador in space had motivated the millions to sign up for a space on the space shuttle.

Of course, any radical action like sending millions of people into outer space met with resistance and violence. Many news shows aired footage of middle eastern men being forced onto airplanes while bound. There was an outcry that the Demi Mondes was sending millions into certain death. Shauna personally knew that, yes, the mortality rate was high compared to US numbers modified by modern medicine, but it was no worse then that percentage of people who died in southern Africa by AIDS. The quality of life for women had certainly changed dramatically since the program had been started. The abused women shelter she volunteered at had half the people it used to. It was obvious that life without men was a wonderful thing.

And now Shauna would know herself. Two weeks ago Leon had shown up at her door. He had slapped her across the face, and told her that she�d get more of the same if she tried to deport him to her �little space toy.� She�d called the police and filed charges. The trail was so current because of the decline in crime since so many men had left. The jury, two men and eight women, had decided since he was so hostile to the program he should be sent up for 3 months to experience it firsthand. Shauna had no intention of watching him come back.

Shaking off her thoughts from months before, Shauna took the metro to the outskirts of town. She got to the launch site 4 hours early. She wanted to be damn sure he got on that shuttle. She wanted to watch him walk up the ramp with her own eyes. Someone who would do what he had done deserved an eternity in space.

She spent the time thinking about the future she had thought they would a have together. They were going to put their money together, buy an old home, fix it up until it was the wonder of the neighborhood. They had gone to the animal shelter, picked out a cat together. It mainly stayed at Leon�s apartment, but whenever he came over he brought Tuna with him.

She remembered spending nights watching classic movies with him, the cat laying between them on the couch like a chaperone, or stretched so that his tail laid on Leon and his head on Shawna�s thigh, like a force wanting them to always be connected in some way. Shauna had taken Tuna�s existence like an omen. Any man willing to have a cat with a woman must be willing to have a life as well. An existence. Maybe even a family. Shauna knew she wanted that with him. She had never before met a man she felt so at home with. She�d run to meet him outside the movies, bury her face in his beard as he picked her up like they were teenage lovers and not in their mid thirties, still searching for the elusive dream of love. They went to dance lessons together. He always tripped during the same bar of a waltz, right before the fica in the corner of the practice floor, when they repeated the one two three of the steps.

She distinctly remembered a night on the phone with him. One that she would never, ever forget. He had called her from home.

�I miss you.� He had not even bothered to say hello. She couldn�t help but smile. His dislike of small talk was legendary, and had a great deal why they had begun dating. She loved a man who disliked the lies mistaken as social politeness as much as she did.

�Oh? Why do you miss me?�

�Because you are there and I am here. I wish I could fix the problem, but I have a big presentation tomorrow. I�m thinking I should have become a bullfighter instead of an advertiser. It�s got to be less bloody in bullfighting.�

�That�s a shame. I guess you�ll just be wondering around in your sweats and eating ice cream all night while thinking of something to tell your client. Why don�t you just try to get things started before the last minute for once?�

�Where is the fun in that? I�m more inspired at the last minute! It makes things more creative, spontaneous. People love that shit. The more money they want to spend on advertising, the more spontaneous it�s expected to be.� Shauna heard a click and him inhaling as he lit a cigarette. One thing she disliked is the way he smoked when he got busy. She disliked his lack of consistency with the habit. He didn�t touch the stuff when everything was going smoothly.

�I think you just like being lazy. Well, I�m going to go, if you can�t do anything tonight.�

She crossed her fingers behind her back, a habit from lying as a child, �I�ll call a girl friend if you�re busy and go see a chick flick. I know you hate those.�

�Hey, sounds like a plan. See ya.�

Shauna knew he hated breaking dates with her. On the rare occasions when he did, like that night, he made up for it with something very romantic the next time. But she didn�t intend to let him break a date that night. She was finally ready. She had decided that, at 34 and a half years old, she could no longer wait for a man to propose to her. She was going to ask him to share her dreams and her life with him. She was ready for the soccer van and old house. She had a ring for him, and she was going to see him tonight to give it to him.

30 minutes later she arrived at his apartment, a casserole dish under one arm and the cat carrier under the other. She didn�t bother to knock, but let herself into his apartment, set both containers on his kitchen table, and went into his work room, where a light was burning brightly.

The glint of light off the shuttle brought Shauna back to the present time. The passengers to the Abonnes were walking to the ships. She fished opera glasses out of her bag and focused on the line. She knew they were placed in alphabetically, so she waiting near the end of the line before searching out Leon�s face. She could see his longish black hair and dark beard even without the glasses, but with them she could make out the fine silver frames to his glasses, the glint of his necklace he always wore. The angry expression on her face that filled her entire being with a pleasant sensation. He deserved everything he got, she knew. And she hoped that all the pleasant reports they had received from the space station were wrong wrong wrong, so that she would know he suffered.

Soon all the passengers where within the ship, and she knew, from countless other launches, that now the real wait began. It would take two hours of check up before the crews allowed the ship to be launched. No one wanted any mistakes to happen, the colonization had gone very smoothly so far. Many political groups had tried sabotage, but it was always discovered through the many checks. Every check was done three different times by three different teams. Shauna knew this, and at night, pondering how she would rid herself from the oppressive nature of Leon�s threats, she didn�t give sabotage any thought. Instead, she focused on what she knew.

Shauna went into the rest room while she waited for launch. Most people stayed in the glass enclosure, so she poured herself a cup of coffee and leaned against the wall under the heat vent. A moment alone was something she was grateful for. She used the time to think about herself, her predicament, her plan. No matter how she looked at the situation, she couldn�t find a trace of guilt. She gulped down her coffee and returned to the survey room. Only 5 minutes left to launch.

Shauna thought about that first launch she had gone through. She and many of her co workers holding their breath as they launched the first ship into the sky. At that launch she had known the name of every person aboard the ship. They had carefully chosen the 800 people to start the station, and she could name every one, and why they had been chosen. She had cried when that ship launched safely.

The one carrying Leon she watched with dry eyes. She had in the gray plastic seat until the black ship was just a dot in the sky, and then� nothing. Only when the surveillance room was empty did she get up and leave. She paused by the exit sign before turning and going down a hallway deeper into the spaceports recesses. The ID card she had borrowed from Leon�s apartments opened every door she needed. Something Mondes believed in strongly was that all citizens should have access to almost everything about government. The idea that anyone could wander into the space port and look at anything was reassuring to many people. The people of Demi Mondes had found that just the idea they could was comforting enough, and hardly anyone actually took time to wonder the old corridors. Leon�s pass would be inactive once the system downloaded the names of those off the planet at midnight. She had 2 unidentified hours in the spaceport before that happened.

Earlier that day at the museum she had stayed behind from the tour to observe the magnificent 12 square foot original outlines of the spaceport. Mondi was big on preserving history, and had left the plans at the museum to ensure they would always be findable when they were needed.

She knew which door to go through. Once she reached the third basement level she starting looking for a very special door. She ducked into the men�s restroom directly beside the main comfort control room. The key she had would not open that door. But she needed to get into that room. That�s why she had gone by the museum. Because of the blue prints to the space station, she knew the vent in the men�s restroom (planned to be 2 feet by 1.5 feet wide) had another vent on the other side of that control room. There was no way, though, to know what was in between. She got out her screwdriver and begin working on the vent.

It was, all and all, remarkably dust less. The air was hot and dry, but she could tolerate that. She had been afraid that the vent would go over some ice cold or red hot pipe, and the other vent would be unreachable. But she could see the light from the second vent within her sight now, and all she had to do was crawl through an unmoving fan to be at her destination. The blades of the fan were a shiny silver, and not sharpened for any purpose other then cutting air. They were still intimidating, however, and she was very careful that neither her nor her bag so much as grazed a blade. The adrenaline rush it gave her reminded her of - but no, she stopped herself there. She�d had enough of this backtracking bullshit, and had every intention of living each day as it had come from now on. No more of this �what if� crap. She was an adult, and strong, and she would have to stop this remembering shit if it involved giving herself a concussion.

Finally she reached the vent. She rolled the nuts off the four corners of the vent, peering through the lines of light to look into the room beyond. It was very clean, and no one was it it. Exactly what she was hoping for. Moments later she dropped down from the ceiling to look around. She dragged a large rather tasteless leather chair under the hole in the ceiling to replace the vent cover. She pulling the chair back to the set of panels laid before it, and sat. Most of the buttons were labeled. Rather boring things like A/C watch tower and camera angle a or b. She moved on to another set of panels. As she bent over the gages making how much water and electricity the station involved, the glint of oddly shaped metal caught her eye. Turning, she saw an old, battered filing cabinet. She could see the dark writing on the labels even at that distance. Up close, they said �Records of bills,� �Surveillance Records�, �Confidential Passwords,� and �Stats of Launches.� She had to clamp both hands over her mouth to keep from laughing. It was much, much too easy to be true. She tried the handle to the last file. Locked. She looked up. The key was dangling from the lock above her head. She began to think she was getting divine intervention to complete her objective. She turned the key, and opened the cabinet.

There in front of her was a mass of all the people who had been sent to space. Hardcopy made by one neurotic individual who was afraid that someday the computers might erase all the information about those in space, and this would be the only was to know. Each label had a of the date of launch and launch pad. Right it the front was the most recent launch, the one Leon had been on. She pulled out the file. Each person was given a quarter of the page for a small picture, stats, and, best of all, the passwords needed to access their computer information. At the bottom of each one, in red ink, was the date they were allowed to come back on and their crime, if any. She was pleased to know that the people who had shared the sheet of paper with him were both intended to be their for life because of battery and rape charges. Maybe she would do some good besides simply serving her selfish needs. She accessed the computer from the first terminal she had looked up, used Leon�s card and password from the file to gain access to his Demi Mondes file, and deleted everything. She made sure by backing out and deleting even his name. Only then did she explore the rest of the large room. It wasn�t an attractive room like the Museum had been, but there was something about the architecture she liked. The walls curved into the ceiling rather then suddenly meeting, everything was softened by curves where a male architect would have put angles. She finally found the emergency exit door in the far side of the room. Making sure she had both Leon�s hard copy and her bag, she slammed into the door and out into the night. She ran all the way to her car, and peeled out of the lot. She didn�t stop checking the rear view window until she reached her hotel room. This was her last night in DC.

Another thunderstorm began as she was getting out of the shower. The lightening and thunder didn�t seem nearly at angry as it had the night before. It was more like the Gods proclaiming their satisfaction over what she had done. She again stopped and tried to find a trace of guilt for her actions. She thought about their sweet cat, Tuna. But really she didn�t think Tuna would miss Leon much more then she would. But thinking of Tuna made her think about that terrible night she had gone to his apartment to propose. She had set her bags down quietly, and, clasping the red velvet ring box in one hand, tiptoed to Leon�s work room door. She had pushed it open with her foot and shouted �Surprise!� before she realized the surprise was on her. Leon was sitting in his work chair with another woman on his lap. Thankfully her skirt covered whatever Shauna would have seen, but his pants around his ankles said enough for her. Shauna had left her dignity and her casserole behind when she fled the scene of Leon�s obvious unattachment to her.

By the time she had gotten home that night, several hours later, after wasting half a tank of gas on just driving around and crying through the car wash, the light on her message machine was blinking. She didn�t need to check caller id to guess who it was. What shocked her was how relaxed Leon sounded in his message.

�Hey, Hun. Thanks for the casserole. Sorry you walked in at that time, I guess there are some things I should have made clear in our relationship. Kaja is my other girlfriend. Call me when you get this message, okay? I don�t want to be too worried about you.�

Shaking her back to present day with a firm reminder about no more what ifs, Shauna opened the flue to her fireplace and lit the read burn log she�d bought at the store before flying the DC. The guy who checked her carry on teased her a bit about it, but let it slide. After all, a fire log is useless without fire. And the cost of a hotel room with a fireplace was remarkably high, not to mention such a thing was hard to find. But Shauna wanted to be sure no one could see her plan.

She ate a meal in the restaurant downstairs, dressing in her best black dress for the occasion. The same dress, in fact, that she had worn when she had gone to Leon�s that fateful night. She picked up the candle from the middle of her restaurant table, and carried it with her to the elevator, and along the 18th floor of the hotel building to her room. She placed it on top of the night table and used the full length mirror to admire her dress. Then she removed it, and laid it on the fireplace, on top of the fire log. She used the candle to light the fire, and in her underwear, watched that beautiful dress burn. She fished through her bag until she found the hardcopy identifying Leon she had taken earlier in the day. She fed that too the flames. She watched the fire until it was down to normal, burning steadily and warmly in front of her. Between the lightening flashes of light and the firelight, many things seemed to gain unexpected shadows. She dug out a red velvet box out from under her pillow. She looked at it for a long time before tossing it into the flames. The ring had cost her all the money she had saved for her retirement. She�d used it because she had dreamed of replacing her retirement with �our� retirement. That dream was long lost now.

After the fire was completely out, so dim that even with the lights off she could see no red glow, she crawled into bed. Feeling under her pillow she felt the coldness of the ring meant for Leon. She had removed it from the case the night before. She was finding closure to a relationship, not stupid enough to throw a $15,000 ring into the flames. Life would be good without Leon. And since she had the locks to Leon�s apartment changed while she was in DC, all the stuff he had saved there would make sure life was good for her.

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