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Art by injuotoko
Ed Jones rushed his buggy towards Aldrin, one of the American Empire’s Moon settlements. Once he got past the airlock, he ran for the recreational area as fast as his spacesuit could allow. He took off his helmet, revealing his sweaty bald head and manic blue eyes. After catching his breath, he said to everyone there:
"Folks, I just saw the most incredible thing in my life. While I was scouting for new settlement locations, I found a group of rabbit girls. Yes, rabbit girls. I am dead serious. They looked just like humans, except they all had white hair, red eyes, long ears, and fluffy tails. Some were wearing white dresses while others had skimpy attire. They were prancing inside a stone ring. I couldn’t tell if they were playing or having some sort of religious ceremony. I tried to take a picture of them, but then they spotted me, turned into actual rabbits, and hopped away. There’s no doubt in my mind. The Moon is the exact opposite of lifeless."
A few men laughed. The women whispered to each other and giggled. The remainder looked at him with skepticism.
"Rabbit girls?" Neil Davenport asked. "Seriously? Last month you said you saw lizard people."
"With God as my witness, I swear they are real. The lizard people too. And I would have had photographic evidence if my reflexes were quick enough."
Neil grinned and did his best to contain his laughter. "Yes, I’m sure you would have."
Before walking away, Ed said, "I’m gonna get proof one of these days. Just you wait!"
The crowd resumed their previous conversations. Neil turned to his son Nathan. "Ed sure is crazy, isn’t he? It runs in his blood."
Ed Jones was a descendant of Alex Jones III, the first King of Texas. He was a strong and wise ruler, but he often espoused strange ideas, the most notable one being that the galaxy was once inhabited by an ancient race known as the Eridun. All of his offspring inherited his mental quirks.
"Weren’t there some old myths pertaining to rabbits on the Moon?" Nathan asked.
"You mean the rabbits that make rice cakes? Yes. But enough about rabbits. Let’s get you started on your work."
Nathan had recently turned 18. He was a bright young man with short brown hair and hazel eyes. Since the day he learned how to read, he was trained to be an engineer just like his father. Now the day had finally come when he would be trusted with real work. They went to the airlock and put on their spacesuits. Such suits were bulky but offered ample protection from radiation and other environmental hazards. The helmets were equipped with an electronic communicator. The visors were hard to see out of, but everyone who wore them regularly eventually got used to it. They hopped on a nearby buggy, waited for the heavy metal doors to slide open, and drove out.
Aldrin was founded in the year 2389, and in just 20 years time, it had already grown to 1,000 residents. Like almost every Lunar settlement, it consisted of a series of interconnected domes. These domes were composed of many thick hexagonal glass panels, and each panel was sprayed with a composite material which screened out harmful radiation while still letting in sunlight. This light allowed plants to grow and produce oxygen, thus creating a home away from home.
One mile to the east of Aldrin was a mining operation, one of many scattered across the Moon. When Neil and Nathan got there, they noticed half a dozen laborers gathered near the entrance and staring at the ground. Neil approached and asked, "What are you looking at?"
"There’s a stone circle here," one of them replied.
Neil looked down and saw that the man was telling the truth. Small stones were arranged in a circle three feet in diameter. "Did any of you do this?" he asked.
"Nope," another laborer replied. "It was like this when we got here."
Neil remembered what Ed Jones said, then he shook his head. Someone must be pulling a prank on him. There was no way this was the work of rabbit girls.
"It’s nothing we need to worry about," he said, not wanting to waste time and resources getting into an argument. "Let’s get to work."
Excavators dug ore out of the Moon’s surface and put them into giant trucks. These trucks then took the ore to the refinery. Nathan’s job was to sit next to his father at the control board and monitor the refining process, from the crushing all the way to the smelting and solvent extraction. Neil taught his son well, for the hours passed without issue.
"Keep doing good work like this," Neil said, "and you’ll be running your own refinery one of these days."
Nathan smiled.
The workers gathered in the break room when lunch rolled around. Despite its name, it was actually a separate structure that was right next to the refinery. Unlike the main building, it had an airlock and an oxygen supply, thus allowing those inside to breathe freely. This arrangement was cheaper than building a dome around the entire work area. They also saved money when it came to the building’s size. Two dozen men were packed inside an area barely larger than a full-sized bus. The cabinets were stacked with beef jerky, crackers, granola bars, and other non-perishable food items. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get them through the rest of the day. Nathan finished his meal before everyone else, then he turned to his father. "Say, can I get a head start on my work?"
"Sure," Neil said.
Nathan put his helmet back on and stepped into the airlock. A set of heavy doors closed behind him and another set opened in front of him. He walked out and looked around at the gray rocky landscape beneath the black sky. The lights of Aldrin shone brightly in the distance. Farther to the south was Armstrong, the American Empire’s first Lunar colony as well as its largest. Hundreds of years ago, people saw the Moon as nothing more than a barren rock, but he and all the other Lunar settlers saw potential, not just for themselves, but for all of mankind. In 2391, just 18 years ago, the American Empire established the first colony on Mars. The resources extracted from the Moon made that endeavor possible. He wondered what else could be accomplished with the Solar System’s natural bounty. He hoped that humanity would one day colonize the stars and conquer the whole galaxy.
Then his mind turned to Natalie Derringer, daughter of scientist Fred Derringer. He had been friends with her since childhood, and they had grown close to each other in the past few years. He hoped to marry her soon. He wondered what his children would accomplish and what marvels they would see.
"The mystic, the hidden, the rabbits of the Moon. Our hills were already ancient when pharaohs met their doom."
Nathan darted his eyes from side to side, wondering where that beautiful singing had come from. He then remembered that sound cannot travel in a vacuum. It also had no distortion, so he knew it did not come through his helmet’s speakers. How, then, was he able to hear it? He turned to his right, and off in the distance he spotted a tall, voluptuous woman sitting on a rock. She had tall rabbit ears and a fluffy tail. Her porcelain white hair reached down to her waist. Her red eyes glittered like rubies. Her leotard and pantyhose were the same color as her hair. Her pale skin glistened in the Sun light. She smiled and waved, and he was instantly smitten.
Never before had he seen such a woman. Her beauty was almost divine. He looked again at her bunny ears and tail and realized that Ed Jones was right. The rabbit girls were real. He started approaching her, possessed by curiosity. If she could speak, he thought, then perhaps she could tell him about her people. She got up, winked, then pranced behind a nearby hill. Her grace was supernatural, for she moved in the Moon’s low gravity as easily humans do on Earth. He picked up his pace, but when he got to where he thought the girl was, she was nowhere to be found. He sighed.
When he looked down, he noticed that he was standing inside a stone ring similar to the one outside the refinery. The ground began to crack, and before he had the time to process what was happening, he found himself falling down a deep hole. Dust flew into the air upon his impact. He got back on his feet unscathed. He looked up at the hole. His immediate instinct was to jump as high as he could, but he could only reach halfway before falling back down. He turned on his helmet’s flashlight and looked around. The cave was shaped like a bottle. He tried grabbing onto the walls, but they were too smooth. He then remembered his helmet’s communicator and got in touch with his father.
"Uh, dad?"
"Something wrong?"
"I fell down a hole and now I’m stuck in a cave."
"How did you end up there?"
"No time to explain. Can you come help me?"
"How deep is that hole?"
"I’m guessing about 50 feet."
"I’ll be right over."
Nathan sighed, knowing that all he could do now was wait. He stood in the faint beam of light that shone down from the hole. He noticed that his oxygen was starting to get low. He hoped his father would get him out soon. His flashlight flickered and went out. Then he heard giggling.
"Who’s there?" he asked.
The giggling grew louder, then a pair of red eyes began to glow in the darkness. They were like those of the rabbit girl he had seen earlier, but smaller. Another pair appeared, then another, then another. The giggling grew louder still. Dozens of eyes surrounded him, all of which emanated a mischievous aura.
The young man’s voice grew panicked. "What do you want from me?"
The eyes began to approach.
He instinctively clenched his fists. "Stay back!"
His mind raced. Why were there so many rabbit girls in this cave? What were they planning to do with him? Something landed on his head and he screamed. He looked up and saw a dangling chain. As soon as he grabbed it, someone on the other end started pulling him up. The red eyes faded into the dark. Once he was out of the hole, he was greeted by his father and several laborers.
"You okay?" Neil asked.
Nathan nodded.
"What happened?"
Nathan gave a brief and slightly frantic explanation. Neil wanted to tell his son that he was being delirious and that there was no such thing as rabbit girls, but he saw that the young man had been through enough and he didn’t want to waste oxygen getting into a heated argument, so they returned to the refinery.
Nathan resumed his duties and did them diligently. The work day ended a few hours later, and as they drove back to Aldrin, he spotted a pair of rabbit ears sticking out from behind a rock.
"Well," Neil said, "I’m proud of all the hard work you did today. And you have a tall tale you can tell about that hole. Although, you shouldn’t venture far from the work site from now on, okay?"
Nathan chuckled. "Yeah."
Upon returning home and entering the recreational area, they were greeted by Deborah Davenport. Although she knew it was part of his job, the thought of her son being out on the Moon’s surface beyond the safety of the dome made her anxious, so she smiled warmly upon seeing him once again. Joining her were several others.
"So," she asked, "how did your first day at work go?"
Nathan took a deep breath and told them what had happened. When he mentioned the rabbit girl, Ed Jones began pointing frantically at everyone.
"You see?" he said. "I told you those rabbit girls were real!" He then ran laughing back to his house.
"Well," she said, "I hope those rabbit girls don’t cause any mischief in the future." She had her doubts, but she chose to humor her son.
After a few more minutes of idle conversation, the crowd dispersed, but Nathan chose to stay. He reclined on a bench and gazed up at Earth, which looked like a blue marble floating in an ocean of ink. Natalie Derringer sat down beside him. He had always delighted in her beauty. Her eyes were as blue as the Earth and her light brown hair was like polished bronze. He also noticed that she was wearing her standard issue white bodysuit, which accentuated her slender form.
She blushed. "This may sound embarrassing, but I believe the Moon rabbits are real too."
He grinned and sat upright. "Really?"
"Yeah. I remember seeing one jump over the dome one night. I didn’t tell anyone about it because I thought no one would believe me. What do you think those things are, anyway?"
"Well, since they’re able to survive in a vacuum, they must be supernatural."
"Like fairies?"
"Perhaps."
"Say, you wanna discuss this more at my house?"
"Sure."
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