Pave the Universe

I think the first time that I knew just how angry Yancy was with the Lunar Expansionists was the day she hit one in the face with a blue jay egg. We were in the big oak tree in the Grand Plaza, sitting on our favorite limb, watching the gentleman in question as he handed out leaflets to people passing by. As soon as he was hit, the man dropped everything and rushed to a fountain to wash the mess off of his face. When he could see again he started yelling at a group of students gathered on the steps of the fountain, evidently thinking that they were the cause of his trouble. I laughed so hard I almost fell out of the tree. But when I looked at Yancy I could see that she wasn’t laughing at all.

"Did you get that egg from the nursery?" I asked.

"It wasn’t viable, Amy," she said in a flat tone, and in her eyes I could see a burning fire. It surprised me, but it shouldn’t have.

Yancy and I worked in the Farms. That’s where I met her. We were about the same age and were both basic skill workers. We were dedicated lovers of animal life and what we lacked in experience we made up for in enthusiasm. Fresh out of college, ready to make a difference, we had chosen the Farms because of the importance of species preservation on the Moon, and because the work was fun and easy.

We were both Moonborn, but Yancy grew up in the Farside Observatory caves, which were a good distance from Bighead City. Both of us went to Gagarin College, out on the edge of the city, yet we had never met. It has been said that in the early days of the city everyone knew everyone else. Not anymore. By the time I was in college, Luna was experiencing a population explosion. That, among other things, was what Yancy wanted to fight against. Too many people, too many tourists, too many new habitats and tunnels and caves. All moving too fast and without a care for the beautiful, pristine Lunar environment, which to some was nothing more than potential real estate.

Yancy was a serious conservationist. On the walls of her cave she had pictures of Earth vistas as well as Lunar surface shots. She belonged to something called the Underfellows. She gave money to the Natural World Group. She participated in surface cleans. A live holo of the surface, just like the ones that some of the restaurants use but smaller, hung over her bed. I bet that looked great in the middle of the night, with all of the other lights out. Not that I ever was in her cave that late. I knew that she liked me, but we never made an issue of it.

The Lunar Expansionists, the group that Yancy considered ‘the enemy’, was essentially a terraforming lobby. You might think that a conservationist like Yancy would like to see green hills and lakes covering the Lunar surface. But a true ‘saver’, as Yancy called herself, wanted things left alone. The Moon was beautiful in its naked splendor. Natural forces, not humans, put the craters there. "Oh, and we aren’t a natural force, too?" I’d ask her. "Meteors don’t need bowling alleys," she’d say. "Volcanoes don’t vacation in luxury hotels."

Some of Yancy’s friends were pretty tough.