L’étoile de la grande vitesse(Ollie Henning) Earth, year 19XX

It was a scene like any other. An old CRT TV was playing in the background, a 5-year-old boy was sitting on a carpet with toys spread out in front of him. For some reason, he tried to put a large robot, whose batteries died, into a small car because he thought that it would be good for the robot.

Then, the light outside drew his attention. Full moon was right outside of the balcony, its sun-reflected ray illuminating the peaceful night. The boy carefully examined the vivid surface of the Moon, its many craters, ridges, and mountains. His mother entered the room.

“Mom,” the boy called, “Is there life on the Moon?”

The mother smiled and patted him on the head. Now both of them looked at the celestial rock hanging in the sky.

“How should I say this to you? There are no people. Only robots live up there.”

“Only robots?” the boy repeated in shock.

“That’s right.”

Mom got up and returned to her chores. Clearly, she meant all the equipment and vehicles left on the Moon by astronauts, but the boy wasn’t yet aware of space programmes and their technicalities. His eyesight kept travelling from the Moon to the toy robot and back again. He imagined adult-sized toy robots running on caterpillar tracks, bumping into each other with their oversized corpuses, and adjusting their rectangular heads with flashing lights instead of eyes. The boy saw in his mind as they fell in line and stood still while being inspected by the supreme robot. The leader gave the orders and the rest resumed their duties, ploughing through gusts of moondust in a hurry.

The boy examined the toy robot once again and clutched the plastic figure to his chest.

“Are you from up there?” the boy asked the robot, pointing to the Moon.

The robot didn’t say anything, but his eyes flashed for a second.

“Oh, jeez!” the boy screamed. “Mom! Mom! The robot gave me a sign! He’s from the Moon!”

The mother kneeled and patiently listened to what the boy witnessed. She smiled and patted him on the head again.

“Oh, my sugar bun. It’s nothing. Here," she pointed, "Your pyjamas rolled up, so a dead battery rubbed against the skin of your tummy. This made the robot start working again for a brief moment. See?”

The boy adjusted his pyjamas, but found it hard to believe the explanation. He continued to stare at the Moon, its crystal-clear beauty continued to spark his imagination.



Note: The story above was a prologue to a new novel project I was working on, but I abandoned it. It was originally written on the 13th of July, 2024.

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