Man From A Small Green Planet

Elias Haden Tyson begins this day like most others… he wakes early and goes about his rigid morning ritual; brush teeth, shave, one hundred push-ups, one hundred crunches followed by breakfast, and a steaming hot cup of synthesized coffee, black.

Haden (which he goes by) 34, an accomplished bio-computer scientist, software engineer, and direct descendant of a prominent American astrophysicist, formerly employed by the vast, globally pervasive AppleSoft Corporation, departed Earth’s atmosphere in a one-man Lunar-Hopper™ shuttle, traveled nearly 240,000 miles in space and touched down on Earth’s moon on the morning of the 5th day of February in the year 2152. His assignment; diagnose, repair, and upgrade the bio-hardware and computer operating systems at the control base for the corporation’s enormous, automated mining facility located near the center of the Imbrium Basin. The base and mining operation was originally designed to operate autonomously but several weeks earlier problems began to arise in the base’s biological supercomputer hardware and automation control protocols costing the corporation billions per day. AppleSoft engineers attempted to correct the problems remotely but were unsuccessful so they sent Haden, now working freelance. By this time, Haden was highly sought after for his expertise and innovations in the growing field of Artificial Intelligence Software Applications or A.I.S.A.’s being utilized by the world’s governmental agencies, mostly intelligence and military.

Being one of the leading Bio-Comp and A.I.S.A. engineer/programmers in the respective fields, not to mention an extremely self-confident individual, Haden figured that the very lucrative gig, although immense in scope, would be a reasonably easy, straightforward one and that he would be back home with his family within three or four weeks, tops. You see… he was the person who originally designed and oversaw the on-site assembly and installation of the massive control systems network so he knew it like the back of his hand. At the time the base was built, it was hoped that elements like Helium-3, Terbium, and Lutetium that were rapidly becoming depleted on Earth, could be located, mined in abundance on the moon, and subsequently shipped back to the now desperately resource-depleted Earth.

Some years earlier, after several repeated catastrophic worldwide geological disruptions, the world’s ocean levels rising causing flooding of major coastal cities with casualties in the tens of millions and three deadly and highly infectious global pandemics (all triggered by the unabated, cumulative effects of centuries of global warming foolishly ignored by the leaders of the world’s governments) had reduced the Earth’s population of 10.5 billion by more than a full third, the UWHC Minister of Defense contracted Haden’s former employer to utilize its vast resources to explore the feasibility of extracting materials it deemed “vital to the security of the United Western Hemisphere Conglomerate”. Haden, never really thought much about global politics or the wider ramifications of his work, being a perfectionist, he was always more concerned that his programming worked properly than for what nefarious, partisan objectives it might ultimately be used.

It had been more than four and a half years since the installation and Haden had not been back to the moon since. A few decades earlier, like many other young boys, he dreamt of becoming an astronaut but as an adult would never in his wildest dreams imagined that he would one fateful day, find himself stranded on the Moon. Yes, you see Elias Haden Tyson is not only stranded alone on the Moon, he is very likely the last living survivor of a race of beings that once inhabited a planet called Earth.

Approximately two weeks after landing on the Moon, just as he was wrapping up repairs and about to begin installing the A.I.S.A. system updates, Haden received a disturbing emergency video transmission relayed from AppleSoft Engineering Control back home. Fox World Newsnet, Earth’s behemoth (and only remaining) media outlet, was reporting that the world’s two mammoth superpowers, the UWHC and The Chinese-Russian Alliance were on the verge of an eminent, all-out military conflagration, one with potential worldwide “end of days” implications. One couldn’t really be all that surprised at the news, as tensions and sporadic military confrontations over territorial and natural resource disputes had been growing between the United Conglomerate and the CRA for many years. This report, however, was different than previous broadcasts… more ominous in that it warned that both sides were threatening to launch their massive arsenals of deadly, 22nd-century weaponry which Haden knew full well from everything he had learned in school if deployed, could annihilate every man woman and child on the surface of the planet and render much, if not all of the Earth uninhabitable for decades, if not as much as a century.

Haden’s thoughts went immediately to Alanna, his dear wife who was six-months pregnant with their second child, and to Alaiya, his beautiful eight-year-old daughter who was the absolute love of his life. He worried to himself, could the world’s superpowers really, finally, be thinking the unthinkable? Then, without warning, the transmission abruptly ended and the video monitor went blank. He frantically tried to contact his family back on Earth but, at that very moment, in an attempt to interrupt the enemy’s communications, each side disabled the other’s satellite network causing a chain reaction wherein tens of thousands of the orbiting objects failed and abruptly fell from the sky, raining fiery debris down on the Earth’s surface. All satellite-based communications were completely and irreparably disrupted making any contact with his family impossible. Haden frantically put on his suit, anti-grav gear, and helmet ran outside and looked toward the Earth. Suddenly he began seeing what appeared to be countless, simultaneous, brilliant white flashes all over the planet’s surface. Realizing these were thousands of photonic-cobalt bomb detonations he fell to his knees and screamed “Nooo!” To his utter horror, Haden Tyson had a front-row seat to Armageddon… the end of the world as he knew it. Now, with no one left to guide his tiny ship back to earth and effectively, no Earth, no family to return to, Haden finds himself a 22nd century Robinson Crusoe, with no Friday… that was eighteen months ago.

Haden keeps track of the passing days and months with the aid of the perpetual digital calendar controlled by the base computer. However, one day on the Moon is approximately twenty-eight Earth days long, this is something that has taken some time for him to get accustomed to. He has developed a strict daily routine to which he adheres religiously, mostly to preserve his sanity… to keep his mind occupied and off of the ultimate hopelessness of his situation. The only thing that prevented the desperately despondent man from taking his own life after the destruction of the Earth and the loss of his beloved family was the knowledge that they loved him dearly and would want him, of all people, to survive. He finds himself compelled to spend long hours viewing and re-viewing recordings of the last few video transmissions he received from his wife and young daughter in the weeks before the satellites went down and everything went to hell. He misses them dearly and curses those in power responsible for the loss of his family and the horrific extermination of the human race. He sometimes feels guilty wondering just how much his own work contributed to the ultimate and tragic demise of his family, his species, his world.

His days now are largely about survival, luckily for Haden decades earlier, the Chinese-Russian Alliance constructed an enormous, manned deep space observation and scientific research outpost about seventy miles north of the AppleSoft mining facility near the Timocharis crater. The outpost, for reasons unknown to Haden, was abruptly abandoned years before his arrival. However, as it once accommodated a large contingent of hundreds of scientists and operational and maintenance personnel, there are still enormous stockpiles of non-perishable food and a huge, still working potable freshwater generator as well as the precious super-compressed oxygen nodules he needs in order to breathe.

Haden often wonders why the Alliance would vacate the huge outpost and leave virtually everything behind, it puzzles him but he is most grateful that they did. Once a month, He takes the large, eight-wheeled cargo transport and ventures out across the barren grey lunar landscape to the former Alliance outpost in order to gather supplies to take back to his base. Fortunately, both facilities are quantum fusion-cell powered, automated, and designed to be perpetually self-sustaining. Provided there are no major catastrophes, as the sole mouth to be fed, Haden calculates that he can survive for quite a few years if the loneliness doesn’t kill him first. To that end, he is in the process of modifying the base computer’s A.I.S.A. for spontaneous conversation with an experimental, synthetic sentience subroutine that he has devised as well as a makeshift, human voice emulator he is fashioning from scavenged parts from the deserted Alliance facility. His hope being, that if successful, at the very least he will have someone (or some thing) to talk to other than himself. He figures that one day he will likely relocate to the larger CRA outpost but for the time being, he feels more comfortable in familiar surroundings where after all, at least everything is in English.

Haden is slightly built, not at all a large man but due to the fact that the moon’s gravity is one-sixth that of the Earth, he’s able to fairly easily lift and move the heavy cases of freeze-dried food and otherwise heavy containers of water from the immense CRA storage warehouse adjacent to the outpost’s main building to the transport rover. Thanks to technological advances made late in the 21st century verifying the existence of, and eventually controlling graviton particles, the interiors of the AppleSoft base and the main building and living quarters of the CRA outpost utilize artificial gravity which adds to a sense of normalcy for the lunar castaway.

On this trip to replenish his supplies and scavenge for a few much-needed computer components, Haden decides to take a look around the foreign outpost, it is old, expansive and he has still not seen every part of the facility. While exploring the living area he grabs a few “girly” posters from the walls. It’s pretty obvious to him that there had not been many (if any) females present at this outpost when it was fully operational. He is elated when he discovers a stash of candy bars left in a vacuum-sealed footlocker. He hopes that they are still edible, as it seems like forever since he had tasted chocolate. From time to time Haden gazes at the stars through the outpost’s enormous deep space telescope. Initially, he had hoped he could point it toward the Earth to get a clear, close-up view of what became of the planet he once called home but the old, antiquated telescope’s navigation mechanism had locked up years before Haden’s arrival and was hopelessly affixed in one position, it could in no way be re-aligned.

After a few hours of exploring, Haden decides to head back to his lunar domicile. He is anxious to get back to test the new communication transmission program he has written. If it works, it will reconfigure the base’s building-to-building transmitter signal and amplify its range exponentially, making it powerful enough to communicate with someone on Earth without the assistance of the now-defunct global satellite network upon which the facility’s main communication system was unfortunately based… provided of course, that anyone could have possibly survived the horrific holocaust he had witnessed a year and a half earlier, and if so were even listening. Haden finds it hard to imagine how anyone could have lived through the devastating initial attacks, let alone the subsequent depletion of the atmosphere, which was fully visible to him from his lunar vantage point. The Earth had been blanketed in a thick black layer of smoke, dust, and debris for nearly a year but after it dissipated, Haden could see that the Earth was no longer the lush, green, living planet he once called home. It sadly now appears as a burnt, reddish-black sphere, devoid of any signs of life, but what does he have to lose?

On his trip back home, Haden maneuvers past some of the many craters that blanket his lunar prison, he chooses to take a path over smoother terrain so as not to jostle his precious cargo. Just over ninety minutes have passed when Haden finally arrives back at his base, he unloads the supplies and removes his nearly 200-pound gravity gear. It has been a long day, he sits down exhausted, fires up the reprogrammed radio transmitter and the automated distress message he previously recorded as the computer aligns the outdoor transmission tower’s antenna. He opens one of the candy bars he found at the CRA outpost and takes a big bite as a slight smile creeps across his face. It had been a long time since Haden had tasted anything sweet… it is good.

Just then, a green light flashes on the control panel in front of him and he hears the static crackle of the radio’s speaker and a faint, diminutive… “Hello?”

The End…