Writing fiction
One Small Step
“One small step for man… one giant leap for mankind.” Cheers echoed around the world. The blurred
black and white video wasn’t clear enough to show what Houston was seeing.
Over astronaut Neil Armstrong’s shoulder regolith clouds
rolled across the surface. The image was
manipulated so that even mission control employees couldn’t see what four men
dressed in shirts and ties could see from a small control room overlooking
mission control.
The glow of the fine particles in the sun began to clear
slowly as they fell gently to the ground like snowflakes.
“They’re here! They’re
actually here! They’re watching us
Houston.” Kinder tones beeped as a man
in the control room employed a cut-off switch removing the astronaut’s words
from the feed flowing into mission control.
“Paul,” a heavy set man sitting at a computer began, “careful, make sure
you get it all.” “Stop the feed, let’s
put a five-minute delay on it before we feed it downstairs.’
As the clouds of regolith cleared mission control could see
Neil from the rear standing in silhouette the sun shining behind him. From across a small crater Neil and Buzz
could see a flat grey object floating just above the lunar surface. As another
craft approached the regolith seemed to shake below. The soft material beginning to float upward
as if attracted to the ship above.
The world watched as the networks began to replay the video
of the astronaut climbing down the steps of the Lunar Module. Crowds everywhere reveled in excitement and
the breaking news of man’s first steps on the moon.
The men in the control room manipulated the transmission
removing audio and cropping the video feed.
Kinder tones beeped as they removed the audio. No one on Earth could see the complete
transmitted video.
“My god, Houston can you see this?” “R…R…Roger…”
Paul, stuttered in amazement. The
rest of the men in the control room were frozen with disbelief.
Back in mission control the struggled with the feed, it
flickered on the screen, fuzzy and dark.
“Neil, we are not getting that, do you read?” Only a broken transmission chirped back. “Working on that Houston.
Nobody at mission control new the sensitive nature of what
was happening. Only the astronauts and a
small group which included the men in the upper control room. “Jesus Christ! Are those buildings?”
Over Neil’s shoulder the sun reflected off of a massive
structure’s, what looked like an entire city spread across the surface. “If I wasn’t here seeing this I wouldn’t
believe it...” Neil said. “Buzz, you’d better get out here.”
Astronaut Aldrin struggled as his foot hit the stair of the
ladder. “Careful Buzz!” Neil said. “Relax… It’s not going anywhere…
ah… at least I don’t think so.” Neil’s
nervous chuckle reassured Buzz and he made his way down the stairs of the LEM.
“That’s it…” Paul said excitedly as he had an epiphany “see
how the building have that texture, that would easily hide them to anything in
orbit or our Earth based telescopes.
Randy the heavy set man at the console grunted.
A cloud of sparkling regolith rolled across the ground as
Buzz turned to see the small craft lift up gently then shot as if to explode to
a mind bending speed then stopping in front of the tallest structure. It then rotated thirty degrees and slipped
into the building looking like it became part of the texture. It appeared as if it was naturally just part
of the building.
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