A Timeless Journey (20 page)

If any person from 21
st
century would have had the same fate as me to live in the future, I am sure it would have chosen to stay and enjoy the great progress that was made in the 26
th
century. Luckily, I was given this opportunity and my decision to stay was justified by the wonderful opportunities the future had to offer and above all, by the strong feelings I had for Luna.

In four weeks, I was going to travel in space and the excitement managed to cast away all my worries I’d had about refusing the chance to return home. The days at work flew past quickly until there were only two days left to our most anticipated three week space adventure. My excitement and impatience grew by the minute thanks to the thought of what I was about to experience.

25

By the time the day of our space holiday arrived, the anomaly had become a distant memory. I had no more regrets in rejecting the opportunity to return home. My mind found it hard to concentrate on the daily dealings and the idea of travelling in space felt like an incredible wonderful dream. The thought of taking off in a spaceship and leaving the planet for the first time seemed impossible. As much as I tried to convince myself that it was exactly what was going to happen, I just couldn’t comprehend the seriousness of it.

The spaceport for flights within our solar system was located in the middle of what used to be the Sahara Desert, between the old countries of Niger and Chad and far away from any inhabited areas. The spaceport was chosen to be built there for two reasons. One reason for being situated in Africa was the geographic middle point between continents and the second one was to be away from the civilised world in case of any disasters or crash-landings.

The flights had become safe as the time had gone by, but not over two hundred years ago when it was first decided as a spaceport site. I learned from Luna that in the past there had been a few space disasters in earlier times, due to the lack of experience on the infusion of zero-point energy and magnetic field which brought up safety issues. Those issues were completely resolved as the technology had evolved and there was no chance of an accident happening.

Our Emze descended slowly down a tube which took us into a giant underground parking for Emzes. From there, we took an underground tube to the spaceport building. The Emze parking location was ten miles away from the spaceport. I understood why the parking was that far once we arrived at the spaceport building and saw for myself this miracle of technology. The sand around the spaceport had been petrified and covered with grass and other plants and if it wasn’t for the heat, I would have never thought I was in the Sahara desert. Most of the desert had been covered with hanging gardens like the one in Australia, apart from the spaceport site. Given the enormous surface the spaceport took and the size of the spaceships, it was obvious to me why the parking was so far from there.  

The spaceport had in the middle of its grounds a round giant structure about two hundred stories high. Surrounding the building in a circle, were sixteen landing and take-off round platforms which connected with the building by moving bridges once the spaceship had landed. Four of the platforms were two hundred yards away, four others five hundred yards from the building and eight platforms a thousand yards away. The closest four platforms occupied a circular space north, south, east and west of the building. The other four occupied northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest and the other remaining eight, occupied the spaces between the first eight platforms in a circular shape surrounding the spaceport building like petals around a plant. On some of the platforms, stood very tall round spaceships that looked like giant tree trunks planted on the circular landing surface.

The spaceport building was something special in itself. It looked like a giant glass tube stretching up towards the sky. In the spaces between the black mechanisms which controlled the gravity, I could see entire floors projected on the outside layer. It all looked as if these floors and the people inside were hovering in the air without any support and the feeling of looking at such a view, is something really impossible to describe.

The whole spaceport building had been divided into twenty levels. There were sixteen departure levels consisting of five floors each and each departure level was connected to a corresponding lift-off platform. Level one or the ground level, was twenty stories high and had bars, restaurants, GNPs and Holo-run welcome desks that guided the passengers to the appropriate take-off level.

From levels two to seventeen were located the sixteen departure levels. On level eighteen was a hotel consisting of fifty floors and was used as a rest place for spaceport staff, spaceship crews and travellers. The nineteenth level had thirty floors of office space for people who ran the spaceport facilities and the flight control. All the twenty floors of level twenty were the contamination wards. These were precautionary units should there be an unknown virus outbreak from space and in that case the passengers would be directed to get a ‘
20-20’
treatment.

Luna and I were going to travel from level nine. After waiting at the level for more than half an hour, a moving bridge started to stretch towards our spaceship. I kept observing everything around like a curious child. It felt being in the kind of dream triggered only by the strongest magic. The excitement of flying into space made the adrenaline spread through my blood like a stream of hot lava and I could barely contain myself. It was the unknown and the unexpected that excited me. I had no idea where we were going to land and how everything was set up in space.

Before we were allowed on board of the ship, we had to go through the safety procedures which took about twenty minutes of our time. A Holo virtual broadcast informed all the travellers of the regulation and requirements of what it was and what it wasn’t allowed once inside the spaceship. The sound of the broadcast was passed on to us through our individual Link devices inside our heads and according to Luna it was important to understand the message as Link had the power to stop from boarding anyone who failed to listen.

After we listened to the flight information, we were allowed to walk through the moving bridge to board the futuristic spaceship. We were transported by a larger than usual cube which operated in the middle of the spaceship from the base to the top. Our travel space looked like a narrow train cabin with only two gravity chairs inside. Luna turned the invisible mode on and all four walls and the ceiling of our cabin showed the view outside.

Our cabin was located about half way up the spaceship and quite high above the ground level. It is pointless to say I found the view a little daunting thanks to my vertigo. A voice originating from the ship’s control room connected with my Link device. The sound in my head announced that we had to be ready for lift-off in three minutes. It invited everyone to sit on the gravity chair, which as you know, takes full control of the muscles.

The travel spaces were like honeycombs attached to a giant tree and I was curious to see what happens to our travel space when the spaceship changes its angle from vertical to horizontal position during the flight. I didn’t fancy travelling face down, but there again, at the time, I completely ignored the fact there is no up or down in space.

When the spacecraft left the planet’s ionosphere, it moved its position a few degrees to horizontal. Our cabin somehow didn’t move with the trunk and we remained seated in the same position. The floor was still our floor and the ceiling was still our ceiling regardless of the spacecraft changing its angle.

The journey to the Moon was just over two hours long, since the hyper drive speed wasn’t practical on flights to the Moon due to its proximity to the Earth. In those two hours, as I looked at the projection of outside on our cabin walls, I couldn’t stop staring at the blue planet which kept shrinking in front of my very eyes. The Moon grew larger in size the closer we got to it. We were travelling at such speeds that the stars seemed to stretch from just a shiny dot to short lines of light. The dark matter that surrounded us made me feel uncomfortable. The dark space was never-ending and scary at least and, if something had to happen to the spaceship, we surely would be killed instantly.

The Moon’s spaceport operated only during the hours of darkness to protect the landing from the direct hot sunrays, which without the natural protection field like the one on Earth, were a real danger when it heated the Moon’s surface. Our spaceship docked at the Moon’s only spaceport, which was similar to the one on earth, but smaller. Once we landed, an air-tight moving bridge connected with the ship. The view from the moving bridge was one that I won’t forget in a hurry.

I walked through the transparent bridge from the spaceship to the spaceport building and it felt I was walking on void surrounded by the darkness and the view of the Earth in the horizon. The gravity on the bridge and inside the spaceport was regulated to the Earth’s parameters and allowed us to walk at ease. I felt safe, once I was inside the spaceport building.

A large cube transported us to the lower ground level and we travelled in a tube through an underground tunnel to the Clavius City, which was the biggest of the many cities on the Moon. It was called ‘Clavius’ due to being built on one of the largest craters of the Moon with the same name. The city had a permanent protection shield for understandable reasons. It was the same shield technology used in any other cities on Earth. Under the shield, the temperature was regulated at twenty five degrees. The shield wasn’t only used to protect the city from the hostile space environment and keep the oxygen in. It was also used to regulate the gravity field. I felt no different in walking and breathing from the way I felt on Earth.

By the time we were accommodated in our guest space in one of the sky-high hotels, the sun was shining bright and the Earth was no longer in our view. We had not planned anything special on the first and third day of our stay there, just random walks around the city. Only on the second day of our stay, we had planned a ride around the Moon in a space suit, which I was looking forward to experiencing.

I observed from our guest space, the projection of the sun-kissed surface of the Moon, which blended weirdly with the darkness of the infinite space. Unlike the blue sky, which we are used to see on Earth, on the Moon there were no blue sky, just the black mass of space and the blinding white light of the sun forming this belt of grey mass. This strange phenomenon that we are unable to observe while living on Earth, was polluted only by a few floating space residue and it had a similar look to the residue we see at the bottom of the ocean. My chest tightened with an unexplained euphoria at such a wonderful sight. My eyes were exploring a sight never experienced before and the excitement for the new discovered images was equal to the excitement a scientist goes through after a life changing discovery.

After settling in our guest space, Luna and I went for a walk around the city. We relished the weird atmospheric surroundings and the strange feeling of being locked in a life-supporting bubble in the middle of a lifeless space. We stopped for a “lunar meal” at one of the many eateries of the Clavius City, before returning to our guest space to catch some rest for the next few hours. We had planned to spend the earthly equivalent of night, partying in a gravity free nightclub or ‘moonclub’ as it was ironically called.

When the second day of our Moon holiday arrived, I couldn’t wait to put my space suit on for the ride around the Moon. It is worth mentioning, that once in space, you realize that the notion of an earthly day loses its meaning and the only way to keep track of Earth time was through an Earth timekeeping application on the Link device. It was important to keep the 24 hour earthly regime in space. It did help us sleep better when we returned back to earth.

Luna and I made our way to the city boundary where the lunar ride was located and waited for the Lunar Ride staff to supply us with the space suits and instructions. While I was waiting, I observed the view outside with avid curiosity. I noticed the surface of the Moon was a lot bigger than in the video footage and photographs I had seen on the moon landing of 1969.

The Earth looked a lot smaller and all I could see was its blue vertical crest. From what I remembered from black and white footage and the photographs, the light shone differently from what I had in front of me. In darkness, outside the city’s dome the surroundings were in total darkness and by sunlight, the Moon surface became really bright. The vast and never-ending surface around the Clavius city looked like a very bright Sahara desert. The brightness around and the darkness surrounding the horizon created a weird illuminous effect. In the 1969 video footage anyone can see the edge of space, not far back from where the astronauts were standing on the Moon’s surface, but seeing it for myself in real life, that seemed impossible.

In respect of the view in front of me, I came to conclusion that the moon landing might not have been real after all. Just to be sure, I asked Luna if she knew anything about the first moon landing.

“You know, looking at this in front of me I think the moon landing in 1969 was fake. Do you know anything about it from history books?”

“You’re right Scott. After the last war when all the secrets were exposed, it was proven that no one had travelled to the Moon, not at least before the 22
nd
century. It was the year 2129 when the first real expedition to the Moon was made.”

“It is a lot of historical events of the past that I knew differently. In my time, there are conspiracy theories about the moon landing being a fake, but no actual facts.”

“The era you come from was a messed up time for humanity despite the efforts of some great people to evolve. Why don’t you concentrate on the ride? I have been twice on it, once with my mum and dad and once with my grandfather and I can say it is a unique experience.”

“It is easy for you to say, I have to unlearn most of the things I knew and relearn it from beginning, not to mention the overwhelming five hundred years of new information.” 

“I think you are open-minded, considering.”

“Considering where I come from, you mean?”

“You use the logic to assess a situation and not passion which is impressive.”