Moon Light

Moon Light

Staring for too long out the small porthole he felt the vastness and the burden of what the darkness held for him. No stars shone. Only the blinking of the knobs on the control panel assured him of his sanity. Don checked his instruments, then settling back for a last minute rest, he felt the seat mold, conforming to his relaxing muscles, one of the few comforts surviving from the old days of space travel. The old days! Thinking of those days made him smile with memories and with a false hope. Official countdowns, blastoffs, mission controls, all of these were gone. But for him they lived on in the old books in his father's study. Those dust-covered books represented the one luxury he allowed himself, forgetting the caves for hours, reading about the past years of prosperity. The job of returning those lost years to the world belonged to him.

The tunnel felt cold, the same dank cold of a dark cellar buried under an old house. So they decided to try to save energy after all. She didn't see the need. Their world died, had been dead for a long time. She shrugged her shoulders. Hurrying quickly on toward the beckoning lighted end of the tunnel, she wondered what awaited her world. They gave Don no choice in the mad scheme. Her footsteps slowed as she drew near the door. On the other side the answer she waited anxiously for these past months. Each day brought it nearer and pushed Don further away from her. She stared at the door; she fell under the spell of the hypnotic opening. There lay the answers to her questions. Finally she could earn the peace that left at Don's departure. With dread in each step she started toward the window. Before her eyes stretched the same landscape that sprawled there all her life, the totally white world of frozen wastelands. It may be as white as the snow described by her mother, but it wasn't the same. It didn't sparkle. No children built snowmen or threw snowballs at by passers, then ran to hide behind trees. No light reflected off the white surface, no light blinded her as she gazed out the window. The excitement and thrill of the first snowfall shriveled, forgotten amidst the ruins of the ancient dust-covered chronicles. No one cared for the old stories of life and sunshine anymore, not since darkness enveloped their world. Before her birth, the sun disappeared from the sky, leaving unbearable cold to enstrangle the earth and its' people.

Relaxing, he thought back over the past few months. His education began with the history of the disaster until finally he learned the truth and wished he never knew. No nuclear war, no deadly enemy destroyed his world, it took only the stupidity and stubbornness of his own people. Warnings went unheeded. Environmentalists saw the ice coming slowly; pollutants and smog in the air had affected the temperature, causing it to drop five degrees. That was all it took to start the glaciers growing, a five-degree drop in temperature. Some scientists, knowing another ice age headed toward the earth, began preparations building underground dwellings for the millions of people. Then, the unexpected. The sun vanished! Glaciers did not creep out as the glaciers of the expected ice age, which would have moved only a hundred feet per year. No, these monstrous ice packs covered the North American continent almost overnight. A screeching, grinding wall of ice sweeping the landscape away, engulfing the greens and browns in an overpowering alvanche of ice, giving only a few thousand time to scurry to caves, instead of the millions the caves were built for. Stores and equipment stashed in caverns, scientist's thought they brought everything needed for a long stay underground.

From her mother's stories, she cherished the tales of the moon more than anything else. When the full moon hovered overhead the whole countryside glowed in an eerie, yet romantic light. She longed to see grass that was green and a blue sky speckled with white fluffy things. Surely her mother exaggerated about the white puffs that floated above your head and drifted into different shaped before your eyes. She never noticed anything other that the darkness that stretched eternally overhead. So many bright colors and so much light must dazzle the eyes of the inhabitants of such a place.