Thread: "Twelve Words for Posterity"

Twelve Words for Posterity
By The Jaded

As his old solar-powered crawler made its way over the last ridge and onto the darker, lower rock of the lunar sea, Juan Lomas saw something glint in the sharp-edged sunlight. Reflections like that didn’t come from lunar rock, Juan knew - it could be a metal deposit, or even salvage of some kind. After staring for a moment, he decided it was worth checking out.

Juan altered course, looking forward to the possibility of getting out of the machine’s cramped cockpit for even a few minutes to identify the source of the reflection. Mindful of procedure, Juan radioed in the minor course change to New Havana, then started wiggling into his EV suit.

Twenty minutes later, the crawler stopped as its pilot stared out of the bubble canopy, a perplexed frown on his face. The glint he had seen had resolved itself into an unfamiliar machine on the lunar waste. There was other, lesser equipment scattered about as well.

Juan immediately grabbed his helmet and latched it into place, checking the seal before popping open the crawler’s canopy. Lunar gravity made it easy to vault out of the cockpit of the tracked vehicle and onto the soft gray dust.

Juan remembered the procedure for this situation, switching on his suit radio. “New Havana, I need to report an unknown equipment sighting.” The colony had records of most of the man-made equipment on the Moon. They could probably tell him what he had found.

“Of course, Senor Lomas.” Juan was not surprised by the use of his name. He knew the operator in New Havana had seen his name on the computer when she’d taken the call. “Your crawler’s tracker puts you near the southwest edge of the Sea of Tranquility, is that correct?”

“That is correct. There’s some strange equipment here.” Just as Juan was about to stop talking, something nonmetallic caught his eye - something not uniformly black, gray, and white like the rest of the moon. “... There’s a flag, too.”

“Senor, did you say a flag?” The operator seized on this. “Perhaps it identifies the site. What does it say?”

“No words. It’s just a bunch of colored stripes.” Juan had also begun to notice footprints, as sharp as if they were laid down yesterday, in the dusty ground. Any denizen of the moon, though, knew that without wind, footprints could remain that sharp for centuries.

“Juan Lomas?” A man’s voice asked. Apparently, Juan had been transferred to to a databank operator. “I need you to tell me what that flag looks like, exactly.”

“Just, well, red and white stripes across. One corner is blue.” There was a pause on the link, an awkward silence. Juan eventually decided to break it. “Is this stuff safe?”

“We are checking our records. Don't touch anything.”

“Acknowledged.” Juan, took a few steps, circling around the largest piece of equipment, a disc-like platform standing on four bent legs. Its outer edges were wrapped in some sort of protective golden foil, of a type Juan had never seen before.

Juan realized suddenly that none of the equipment looked even remotely familiar. Whose was it? It certainly wasn’t South American. Didn’t look Chinese either. Who did that leave? There wasn’t a Russian base within a thousand miles, and the Europeans didn’t even bother with the moon. Could be private, he supposed, there were at least half a dozen corporations that owned spacecraft. But there weren't any visible markings to back that up.

“Senor Lomas, there are no records of activity at your location, but if your description of the flag is accurate, there is one possibility.”

Juan frowned. No records? Odd. "What's that?”

“We think you have discovered an old American landing site.”

Americans. Juan remembered what was taught in school about the American empire. A great and powerful nation, but one that rejected what the rest of the civilized world embraced - the glorious advent of the socialist government. At least, for a time. The Americans had landed on the moon, long ago, but the positions of the landing sites were lost when an EM pulse from an Iranian H-bomb wiped out every computer from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic Circle to the Yucatan, along with almost half the world’s computer data.

“An American site?” Juan surveyed the scattered equipment again. That would explain his inability to characterize the equipment. “Interesting. Didn’t know they ever landed in these parts.”

“Take any pictures you like, but do not move the equipment, Senor Lomas. We are sending experts to verify. If it is American, studying it could have historical value.”

Juan walked over to the platform machine. Could it be part of one of the first vessels to reach this inhospitable sphere, over a century before? Though they were leaders in a corrupt, decadent age, the Americans of old had a sort of mystique about them. What was he supposed to feel, Juan wondered, standing in such a place, an arm’s reach from equipment used by the men who first braved the void to reach Earth’s companion?

“I wonder what they said, when they got here.” Did they sing anthems glorifying American power? Did they dedicate the occasion with a long, stirring speech about their dear leader of choice, and how that person set them on the path to being in this place? Did they lay boisterous claim this dusty wasteland in the name of their empire?

Juan’s radio must have been on when he said that to himself, for someone on the other end replied by way of a recording. It was old, judging by the quality of the sound. It was also short. Twelve words, spoken in English, was all that could be heard before the radio again clicked off. None of those words glorified a great leader, or exalted the nation of the speaker.

Those twelve words rang in Juan’s ears with unnatural tenacity. He doubted not their authenticity, and knew inexplicably but without doubt that the footprints next to his, leading to and from the pedestal device, were those of the man who spoke them.

Careful to give the old prints a wide berth, Juan returned to his crawler and set it back on course. Even after the place was hidden by the frozen swells of the Sea of Tranquility, those words echoed in Juan’s mind.

“That’s one small step for a man... One giant leap for mankind.”

A few notes about this story:

• Technically, yes, what Armstrong actually said is widely (and accurately) transcribed as omitting the word "a". However, starting with that version, I decided to add the "a", given that that's what he was supposed to say, and it makes more sense that way (The word "eleven" is also far clumsier than "twelve").
• Terminology describing lunar geography predating computers, I expect that it will survive them as well.
• The accent mark in the Spanish "senior" is missing, because I haven't gone to look up the unicode numbering for the character I need.

I really liked this, Jaded. I guess the Cubans are it now. Described the atmosphere - or lack of it haha - perfectly drawing me in to the neat ending. Corrections minor - 1st para - He decided might be a new sentence? - non-metallic - Juan Lomas? asked a man's voice. Did they sing their anthem? not necessary to say country. And that's it. What else do you have?

i also really liked this, very nice story to follow. it drew me in and i liked reading the smaller details about what became of the world in our time. the layout to the end is done very nicely, and i can't say that at any point did i find anything sticking out at an odd angle. some more detail would be good, if you were to expand the piece. i hope to read more of your work soon

Thanks for the feedback, suggestions noted. I'll update this copy when I make changes. I can see where the sentence structure in P1 is awkward, as I've struggled with that particular bit before, so I'll go back to hacking it with a meat cleaver and rearranging it until it makes sense.

In technicality, you could read a few more of my more complete pieces now (use the home page link on my profile, if you're curious. It's all safe, content- and language-wise).

I went through the text of "Twelve Words for Prosperity" and made a few tweaks. The most noticeable of these is in the paragraph starting with "I wonder what they said", which I completely rewrote, noting mockingbird's point as I did. Thanks for the thoughts, guys. The text above has been updated.

As for expanding this piece, I doubt it. Its original intent was to be no more than flash fiction (<1000 words) but it's gotten a bit out of hand and doesn't qualify for that descriptor any longer. I might write something else in the same continuum later, but for now, it stands as is.

I like it. Only thing I would change is the end of the american empire. You almost lost me when I thought this was going to be extolling the virtues of socialism.

This shows a lot of promise. Your prose is established, which is important. I look forward to reading more of your material. The only thing I would say, is to approach anything that makes a political statement with caution! This is something that I had to deal with in my first novel. If you make something too obvious, half will say YES and half will say NO! Subtlety is what changes people's minds.

I don't do political themes too often. My favorite pieces have none whatsoever, this just happens to be the piece I have most often edited because it's shorter than the rest. (Most of the things I write weigh in between three and ten thousand words)

The point of the story was never to change anyone's mind, it was to get it out of my head, just like everything else. I don't write to be read, I write because it gives my imagination something to do besides slowly drive me crazy.

Maybe I'll put up something else on this site this weekend, we'll see.

I don't blame you. Political is always a little touchy. I'm not saying I disagree with you. If anything, I support a more socialistic approach to things. Canadians have learned that a mixture of democracy and socialisim works pretty well! My short stories are also more in lines with yours, in terms of length. I actually appreciated that you could communicate an idea so quickly! I'm a little envious that you did it so well and so fast!

As to writing to be read: My approach is how I would react if I was reading my work with no idea of what it is about. If I see something where there's a danger of me going "Oh this is what he's talking about" too quickly, I always try to dial it back a bit. I wasn't trying to put you down, I was just reacting to what I would say if it was my work. I'm sorry if it seemed that way.

The point of the story (in political terms) was intended to be nothing about whether socialism or capitalism was better. It's a commentary on priorities. The "proud" Americans who landed on the moon didn't extol their own virtues, or the virtues of the cult of personality of the day, they didn't mock the Russians' inability to beat them there. They used the fewest words to encode a meaning which I think will last beyond the memories of all these social constructs. It took a certain type of person to do that.

The behavior Juan expected of them is my interpretation of what might have happened had Russian cosmonauts gotten there first - we'd have been graced with a lot of proud noise, none of it particularly profound. In Juan Lomas's world of "socialism" (which I tried to heavily hint means dictatorial communism - after all, he is obviously Cuban), America is remembered by its enemies, and the words on the static-laden old tape are just about the only thing hinting that there was something worth remembering about my country.

I did a lot of work pulling all the really heavy politics out of the thing pretty early on - version 1 clocked in at almost twice the word count, a lot of blatantly obvious soviet-style "re-education" drivel in Juan's thoughts comprising the bulk.