Lunar Signals – Survive
The first prospector code, and what it costs when someone is still out on the trails.
From the Fabulae Lunae series — The Lunadyne Incident, Thunder Moon Tussle, and Mask of the Joyful Moon.
Thursday live on Torn MacAlester’s Space on X. Check @Torn_MacAlester for the link.
Tonight’s Topic
Survive
Monday this week is the alarm in the bar: straw-cups down, eight minutes to Hab D, Doc still stopping for the radiation monitor. Tuesday is Ninja Cranston, the name that turns a strike into mercenaries. Wednesday is The Mountain — Earth already grey, lungs already a medical problem. Tonight is the rule the prospectors wrote so the Moon would not get a free kill.
In CME, Nils is on a south road after Tilly, tracks in the dust, Doc asking how he knows what Tilly would want. Medical ethics. An experiment she might refuse. He does not give a speech about courage. He gives the code. We will not have time to go through them all, but the first is Survive.
The Moon could find plenty of ways to kill us, so we agreed that our first goal was to survive anything that it threw at us. It means that we don’t roll over and die. It also means that we don’t let each other die if we can help it.
That is Rule One. Later, when Richards is ready to write Jane off as an amateur whose insides are jelly, Nils puts it back on the table. What is rule one? Since we all know the answer, we need to get on with making sure we all survive. That includes Jane. And even Tilly, if we can swing it. Mia: Do not give up and die. Any of us.
Thunder Moon Tussle will hang the same sentence over a deputy and a favor. The only thing that matters, if they can keep it. The cellar and the south road are where the code is still a practice: you empty the bar, you grab Doc; you drive toward a woman behind a mountain; you do not let the lag talk you into leaving her.
Official law will not write this down. The sheriff can order Hab D. He cannot make Tilly be in the net. Survive is what the people who work the trails owe each other when the warning fails and backup is still three days away.
Questions for the Room
- Doc stops for the radiation monitor. Nils will not let her stay for a bag. Which of those is Survive, and which is the eight minutes talking?
- Tilly is out of the tower. Twenty minutes in crater shade. If Rule One is don’t let each other die if you can help it, how far down the South Road is “if you can help it”?
- Richards wants to replace the amateur. Nils says we were all amateurs here. Is Survive a medical ethic, a crew ethic, or a way to refuse the company’s body count?
- Thunder Moon Tussle asks whether a prospector and a deputy will remember Rule One when the favor turns into danger. Do you hear that first in the cellar, or only later in the bar?
How to Join
Join the conversation on Torn MacAlester’s Space on X. Check @Torn_MacAlester for the live link.
Further Reading
- The Lunadyne Incident and Other Stories — “CME”
- Life on the Frontier – When the Alarm Sounds
- Hard Tech & Science – Eight Minutes
- Thunder Moon Tussle
- Mask of the Joyful Moon
- Related site posts: Nils Carmike (Revisited), The Three-Day Lag
The Joyful Moon is still watching…
and Rule One still applies.
— Torn MacAlester
Still riding the trails with Nils, Gen, and the whole Fabulae Lunae crew
🚀🌕
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StoriesThe stories of Torn MacAlester are science fiction, where the science is well-grounded. I intentionally made any deviations for speculative purposes. To maintain maximum realism, I restrict the scope of these deviations. |
ArticlesI write articles of science fact and science fiction. The articles here span the knowledge of modern science and the speculations of fiction. I try to caveat everything that is an assumption. You will find articles about spaceflight, the possibilities of alien contact, and descriptions of technology used in my stories. |
