“Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like on a-Jupiter and Mars.”
The jazz song welcomed Krupa as she entered a building that was considered swanky in its better days. These days, it wasn’t home to offices where people in fancy clothes walked about, yelling into their phones, cracking spectacular deals. The rich, after all, had flown away in their expensive spacecrafts and ground-breaking technology. Technology that would allow them to reach the Moon or Mars in half the time than the usual three days or seven months.
The politicians and government officials had been next to leave. Though the rich hadn’t wanted to share space with them. They didn’t think anyone apart from them could govern people. What people the rich wanted to govern in space Krupa didn’t know since they had conveniently left those very people behind on Earth.
Like her. Like her girlfriend. Ordinary people, with ordinary brains and ordinary bank accounts.
Ahilya, her girlfriend, worked in the swanky building she had entered. This one had been converted into a simulation centre because the rich needed to earn their money from somewhere, while showing their dominance, right?
The simulation centre offered world-class VR technology that would make the wearer feel like they were on the Moon or Mars. The raw material that was fed into the system was obtained from those in orbit, or living on Mars, farming potatoes.
Krupa didn’t know how or why it was okay for the rich and the officials to get their hands dirty on Mars but not on Earth. No, on Earth, they only dirtied the lakes, rivers, oceans and killed just about anyone coming in the way of progress.
Krupa looked around the building that was once the height of envy of all the corporates for its solar panels and recycled air and water. Now, it looked run-down, empty, desolate. She sighed. Her ancestors had left behind stories, art, wisdom and an understanding of how the wider world worked. Her generation’s legacy would be grey and white hulks of masonry.
She walked to the reception where she was to pick up Ahilya. It was their three-year anniversary today and they had thought of celebrating by making some ordinary pasta and drinking some ordinary wine. But, her girlfriend wasn’t where she had said she would be. Instead, a man was standing there with a smile that frankly made her want to take a step back.
“Hi! Would you like to visit Mars or the Moon?”
Krupa snorted. “Neither thank you. I’m happy on Earth.”
“We have got some new footage from the Moon. You can now become an electrician on Moon, making sure that the heating system is working. What do you say?”
“No thank you. Is Ahilya in?”
The man’s smile dimmed and then sputtered out. He scowled. “I don’t know where she is. But you could spend some money while you’re waiting for her.”
Krupa shook her head. Though Ahilya’s overlords did not approve, she had taken Krupa on multiple stealth journeyings. She had seen the potato farms of Mars and the houses on the Moon. She had seen how someone had screamed about their manicure being ruined because they had to turn the machine that maintained gravity. She had seen another someone blackmail a friend because they didn’t want to do their share of tilling Mar’s ground and wanted the friend to do their share as well. She had seen how delicately everything was balanced now that there were no boundaries on a map to keep peace or instigate war. Or how everyone had to rely on the other for survival.
She wondered if it galled the rich, the officials and all the people who were supposed to run the world that their escape from the perils of Earth had come at the cost of mutual cooperation.
In a way, she mused, a smile spreading across her face as she saw Ahilya walking towards her, it was good that only ordinary people like her had been left behind. The air was clean now. There was no one to show off to. No one cared if you had followers. Social media had stopped turning people unhinged. The sky was blue instead of grey. The grass was green instead of brown. There was plenty now. People had houses to live in. They cared more about their day to day living than who was with whom or who went by what name or who worshiped who.
And any time Krupa wanted to look up to the sky, she would see millions of stars. It gave her some solace that at least these stars were beyond human malice since they were probably already dead, and just their spark was visible now, so many light years away.
It was nice, living on Earth. The crème of society was welcome to fly to the Moon or settle on Mars. She was happy living her ordinary life, with her ordinary girlfriend.
“Fill my heart with song
And let me sing for ever more
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore.”
Lyrics are from Frank Sinatra’s song: Fly me to the moon.
Header photo by cottonbro.
tales of Suchita 
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