When my wife asked, “What?” I shook my head. “No, what?”
I reiterated the train of thought above, then added, “I was wondering if it would be possible to build a colony on the Moon using just what you could buy at Knox?”
We pondered it for a few moments, then suddenly said in unison, “Yes!”
Inspired by Matt Weir, the result of my musings continues below.
The thing is, the Last Moon Walker picked a coconut tree to be buried under. Just so happens to be one of the larger species of coconuts – the Cocos nucifera. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. It’s pretty much the “coconut” tree everyone imagines when they think of a coconut palm.
The problem is that Moon soil is totally wrong and the only way we can grow trees on the Moon is if they are actually planted in the soil…
After the Second Wave reached the Moon and started expanding the places you could find footprints in the fine Lunar dust, what followed was fifty years of Colonization. Not all of them stayed, and some colonies were dreadful failures, but gradually, the population of the Moon began to climb.
The Americans were NOT alone this time. Chinese, Indians, Australians, European Union, Saudi Arabians, Brazilians, Japanese…in all, forty-two nation states sent astronauts. Multiple genders fed their spirit of adventure, inspiring people of multiple viewpoints to come to the Moon. Multiple faiths claimed their point of view from the Moon as well. (Despite the vocal fears and horror of those whose only allegiance was to Humanity, predicted an outbreak of sectarian warfare to rival anything in Earth’s bloody religious history. After another fifty years, the fears abated, and while cautious, mutual respect and conversation – and of course arguments! – seemed to hold sway.
The Second Wave is marked by the last person to come to the Moon to “visit”. Her name was Roza Rymbayeva Golovkin, named after a famous Kazakh singer and song-writer. She’d done several touristy things, then returned to Earth.
She was coming to Jax Lunar Lumber to see her tree. The Lunar and Earth press started to bother us the day after. Of course, no one had ever paid attention to Jax Lunar Lumber until the Last Lunar Walker contacted us to see her tree.
In other words, she was making another “Visit-To-The-Moon”.
I was irritated, to tell you the truth. I’d made the Moon my home. I was a resident. What was she…a celebrity. I’d honestly never had much use for celebrities. I’d half a mind to tell her what she could do with her visit.
Then I got a personal message from her.
Hand-delivered by an old man who worked in the bowels of the Communication Needle at the South Pole Station, also known as Chandrayaan, the Indian lander that touched down in August of 2023, he physically knocked on the door to my quarters. I’d just finished planting both a species of corn designed for Lunar gravity, and flooding a shallow one-hectare pond after seeding it with dried Prochlorococcus, the algae species that produces more oxygen than any other species.
He waited for me to open the paper note and read it. The lower sheet of paper was blank. He held out a pen when I looked up.
I said, “Have you read this?”
“No, Mx. It’s not allowed.”
“So you don’t know what it says?”
“We’re very discrete. That’s in our company slogan.”
I nodded. I wrote, “Please feel welcome here. We look forward to seeing you.” I handed it back to him, he bowed, and made his way slowly out of Jax. I went back to the cavern, then headed to the deepest cave. We’d blasted a hole through the surface, then used nanomachines to build a transparent dome of Lunar glass. Light flooded down, falling on the palm tree which now stood four meters tall. The signature torso – slender and straight, swelling, and the leaves fountaining from the swelling made the image perfect. It didn’t have any fruit – coconuts – yet. Coconuts take a year from appearance to falling off the tree. These still had several months to go. I’d noted when a good time would be.
Several days later, I got a not delivered by the same man. When I opened it, I read, “Dear Mx. Jax: I am coming to the Moon to die. I would like to die hear my coconut tree. I would also like my remains to fertilize the tree. I will be arriving in eight weeks. My doctors tell me I have that, plus an uncertain number of days.” On the bottom, she wrote, “Whatever amount of credit is required to do with, I can afford it. Spare no expense. Whatever remains will be given to Jax Lunar Lumber. Perhaps you can arrange for the trees wood to be harvested and made into a box in which to place my rendered body and a few mementos. Thank you for doing this.”
I brought the letter into my bedroom and sat at my desk and stared at it for several hours. Finally I stood up. There were some things I had to get done before I had a celebrity die in my lumberyard…
Resources: The Moon Trees, https://www.urbanforestdweller.com/we-almost-forgot-about-the-moon-trees/ ; https://www.space.com/moon-colonists-lunar-lava-tubes.html ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3
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