Fab­u­lae Lunae Vignette – The Mountain
A rein­tro­duc­tion

Lunar noir hard sci­ence fic­tion: jus­tice is per­son­al, and back­up is three days away.

Last week’s vignette was Dri­ve to Hous­ton — Jacob Con­ner on an ash road, NASA shut­ting the sta­tion down, a stub­born argu­ment that space­flight has to sur­vive Yel­low­stone. The Time­line of Events does not stop in Build­ing 10.

Next is The Moun­tain.

Before Con­rad Station.
Before Gordonville.
Before any­one on the Moon has to call the sur­face grey on purpose.

There is a cab­in on a twist­ing road, and a man who thought six weeks south would be enough.

The Piece

Jake Con­way aban­doned the moun­tain when the ash fell, the way every­one who could, was told to load the jeep, go south, and wait it out with a rel­a­tive in New Mex­i­co. They expect­ed a lit­tle ash. They encour­aged move­ment any­way. After about six weeks, he has worn out his wel­come. He dri­ves back.

The for­est looks paint­ed. Aban­doned hous­es along the road. One still has lights. The neighbor’s place used to be a vivid pink, he thought, broke the wilder­ness. Now it is dull gray with only a hint of the old col­or. Grey like every­thing else. Grey like the Moon.

Hei­di George comes out in ash-caked cov­er­alls, ban­dana, safe­ty gog­gles. She is out of gas. She needs to check on some­one. He lets her in and sneezes. She tells him to put on a mask. The ash is killing all of us. Keep it out of your lungs else they turn into cement. Her cough is asth­ma, she says, since she was ten. What is worse is the fore­cast: rain or snow soon. The worst acid snow in history.

The sto­ry is Y+0. The sto­ry does not take place on the lunar sur­face. It belongs in the Fab­u­lae Lunae sequence because the lat­er Moon is a land­scape peo­ple chose after Earth paint­ed itself the same col­or. Conrad’s grey-tan regolith is not an exot­ic back­drop. It is what the moun­tain already looked like when the ash would not lift.

Why It Matters

Read­ers who have Jacob argu­ing for an off-world pop­u­la­tion in Dri­ve to Hous­ton get the oth­er half of Y+0 here: the peo­ple who try to go home. The cab­in is still there. The col­or is not. A neigh­bor who nev­er left, or came back soon­er, is already treat­ing dust as a med­ical prob­lem. The Moon com­par­i­son is not poet­ry in the lat­er books. It is a mem­o­ry of this grey.

The Moun­tain is the next Time­line beat after the Hous­ton dri­ve. Already, the Mason name is in the fire. The space pro­gram is already being asked to die so indoor crops can live. Jake’s prob­lem is small­er and clos­er: lungs, gas, a road that used to be a wilder­ness and is now a grey that will not brush off.

It stands alone. It also explains why, years lat­er, a lunar sta­tion can look like home to peo­ple who already sur­vived a world the same color.

You can read the full piece here:
→ The Moun­tain

Fur­ther Reading

• The Moun­tain — the com­plete vignette
• Time­line of Events
• Fab­u­lae Lunae Vignette – Dri­ve to Houston
• Fab­u­lae Lunae Vignette – “Sins of the Son”
• The Luna­dyne Inci­dent and Oth­er Stories
• Thun­der Moon Tussle
• Mask of the Joy­ful Moon

The Joy­ful Moon is still watching…
and the moun­tain is still grey.

— Torn MacAlester
Still rid­ing the trails with Nils, Gen, and the whole Fab­u­lae Lunae crew
🚀🌕

Stories The 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. Read More

Articles I 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. Read More

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