Moon’s Arrival

I woke with a start. Had the bed moved?

A wave of voices rose up from the sidewalk and filtered through my 4th floor window. I slid out of bed, gasping at the chill in the floor as my bare feet hit the wooden floor. I moved to the floor-to-ceiling window, mere steps from my bed. I moved the heavy drapes slightly to provide a thin crack to view the street below. The street was lit, as usual, by street lights. No star light — or moon light for that matter — reached the ground here. The alarming thing is that the street was teeming with humans moving frantically and erratically and loudly. Living in a city, it’s expected that there’s always some people out and about at all hours of the day … but this! This was not the norm.

My phone buzzed. And then buzzed again. And again. News alerts, and my editor. Get to the newsroom NOW he commanded. I stumbled about my room, grabbing my clothes, one handed, from the day before that were still crumpled on the floor. With my other hand I read the alerts as fast as they flew in:

• Vibrations Felt on All 7 Continents
• Cloudless Sky, but No Moon Observed
• Moon Hits Earth, Meteors to Follow

The information wasn’t computing for me. I slipped into one shoe, then the other, grabbed my winter coat and beelined for the elevator.

It was only when the elevator reached the ground level and the doors began to spread open, did I realized I was wearing two different shoes. At least they were both comfortable. Who knew how big this story would be??

Through two sets of glass doors, and I was on the sidewalk. The wind was stupendous, but had none of the seasonal chill. I braced myself, feeling the need to lean forward into the wind, to make any traction. Up three blocks, turn left, and in my concentration to overcome the wind in my journey forward, I bumped into someone inadvertently.

“Sorry!” I said, but the wind whipped the word away, unheard, and I found myself gulping to regain my breath. The person didn’t even turn when I pummeled into her. I looked in the direction she was looking and saw what was so distracting.

The moon looked so close, you could touch it. Definitely a full moon and bigger and bluer than I’d ever seen. I moved slowly through the thickening crowd to get closer. I knew this was silly. Like chasing a rainbow. But it really did seem to touch the surface of the earth.

Two blocks down, I realized, it wasn’t illusion. It wasn’t like a rainbow at all. The moon was literally sitting on the ground. The wind continued to twist and writhe uncontrollably, finding cracks between skyscrapers, whistling through on a fierce mission. With no small amount of effort, I reached the giant cratered blue moon. It was almost glowing. Fighting the wind, I reached and pulled a small handful of moon sand from the moon’s surface. The wind immediately ripped the tiny grains from my grasp.

The phone buzzed again. The glowing screen showed my editor’s text WHERE ARE YOU??

I jumped as if he was actually shouting.

Turning I bumped into another bystander.

“Sorry!” I said again, futilely.

I raced down the street, the wind suddenly shifting course and working with me to propel me towards the newspaper’s complex on Maple Street.

Rushing into the newsroom, still feeling like I was being shoved by the wind, I saw that the bustle was not like I’d seen since I began working here three weeks ago.

“Margot!” Landon, the editor, yelled across the newsroom almost the moment I stepped over the threshold into the mayhem. His office was on the other side of the chaos, but I picked my way through to him as efficiently as I could.

“The moon has crashed to earth, near your place! What did you see on the way over here?” he barked.

“Uh, umm,” I stammered.

“Speak up!” Landon barked.

I tried again, more boldly: “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner. The sidewalks are full of people and the moon!” It was somewhat incoherent.

“Yes!” Landon barked again. “Did you see it? Did you talk to anyone?”

“Yes, no” I replied in the order I asked.

“Which is it, then? Yes or no?”

“Yes, I saw the moon; no I didn’t talk to anyone,” I answered carefully.

“Anna!” Landon shouted out. Anna rushed over confidently. “Help greenie here write up what she saw and get Mark from science to fill it out more fully.” Without waiting for Anna to respond, Landon shouted for another reporter.

Anna walked away without looking at me, and I followed her like a dejected puppy.

“What did you see?” she asked finally, turning unexpectedly to me, still a few feet from her desk. “You live near the crash site, right?”

“Umm, a few blocks,” I responded uncertain, “it’s on my walk here.”

“Great, great,” she said appreciatively and plonked herself unceremoniously into her time-worn desk chair. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. “Tell me everything.” I stood awkwardly, and then she rolled her eyes and heaved the pile from the short stool near her desk and dropped it with a thud on the far corner of her desk. The noise of the heavy stack barely registered above the din of the hectic newsroom.

Anna’s fingers returned to the keyboard and she looked at me expectantly.

“Well, it’s bigger than I expected,” I began.

“Honestly Margot,” Anna said gently, “no one cares what you expected. What did you actually see?”

“Oh,” I said as I felt my cheeks grow hot. “Umm, lots of people, which is abnormal for this time of night. Before that, what woke me up, was that I think my bed shook.”

Anna’s fingers flew across the keyboard as I spoke, the pace of my story moving faster and faster.

“Great,” she said as she banged out the last word. She grabbed the phone on her desk and typed in four numbers. “Mark, get over here,” was all she said before replacing the phone roughly into it’s cradle.

Mark was around 60, with white thick hair, flexed with silver. His beard was neatly trimmed. He was the kind of journalist who wore jeans with a tweed sports jacket. On him, it worked.

He looked at me pointedly as he ambled over to Anna’s desk. I stood obediently, freeing up the stool for him to sit at. I stood awkwardly, but wanted to remain to hear what Mark would say.

“What do you know?” Margot asked, “About the moon?”

“I know lots of things, what do you want to know?” Mark asked with a grin.

Anna rolled her eyes. “What is the predicted effect if we have no moon?”

“High winds because the moon’s gravitational pull helps temper wind gusts, little to no extremes in weather, so seasons will be less pronounced, less extreme tidal swings so low tides will be lower and so will high tides …” his voice trailed off.

“Okay, that’s good,” Anna encouraged her fingers flew writing a list of effects. “What else?”

“Margot!” I heard Landon shout from across the room. Then I realized it wasn’t the first time he’d summoned me. I rushed over, apologizing as I went scurrying by one reporter or another.

“Go get reactions from people on the street,” He commanded. I looked at him blankly, processing what he was asking of me. “Go!” he said harshly. I jumped and spun towards the exit. I rushed through the newsroom, dodging desks and humans.

Back on the sidewalk the crowd had only grown. The wind was still overwhelming, but it wasn’t cold. The blue glow permeated the city scape, but I buildings blocked my view of the moon.

“Hi!” I said to the person next to me, “I’m Margot, a reporter for the Chronicle. Can I ask you a few questions?” I asked, timidly.

“Yes,” the older gentleman with kind eyes said to me.

“Why are you outside in the middle of the night? Are you normally?”

He laughed nervously. “No, no, I’m normally in bed — I live right up there,” he said pointing behind us and up. “But I saw this weird light and from my window you can see the moon has crashed in our city! I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I’ve just come out to see if I can get a closer look.” He smiled, waved and slithered through the crowd on his slippers slapping noiselessly above the din of the crowd.

“Hi, I’m a reporter for the Chronicle. Can I ask you a few questions?” I asked a woman who looked no older than me.

“Sure!” she said brightly, but not taking her eyes off of the sky. She slowly spun away from the moon. “Have you seen that?” she asked.

I looked up. There encircling the sky were thousands of tiny rough points of light. They weren’t stars. They were tiny mini moons.

The woman moved against the flow of the crowd, away from the moon light.

“What is it? Where are you going?” I asked her as she moved swiftly.

“I just want to see it where there is more open sky,” she threw the answer over her shoulder. Suddenly, I too was curious about what the open sky would look like. I watched her red hat bob ahead of me, weaving between onlookers who were oblivious to this possibly more transformational light show that was happening in the sky behind them.

We made it to the park, two blocks away. Here it was clear to see an arc from the top of the city buildings on one side, to the top of the buildings on the other.

“It’s a meteor rainbow,” the woman breathed.

“Yeah,” I said, my face turned up to the sky, mirroring my companion.

“Maybe Earth traded its moon for planetary rings,” she said in awe.