Art Prompt Writing Contest #6 - The Last Selenite

The old Jonathan fell asleep in the comfortable seat of one of the new modern metro-politan trains that reached almost the speed of sound. When he woke up, he looked out the window and saw the full moon peeking through the mountains, it seemed that this white circle was chasing him, he stared and inevitably melancholy engulfed him, the memory of Ada had returned to his memory. Many years had passed by since what happened on the Moon and on Earth.

Man has colonized the moon and Jonathan's parents lived in one of the many colonies that settled there, his father worked in one of the factories responsible for extracting helium-3 from the lunar surface, an element that was used on Earth to generate elec-tricity at low cost, the moon had become a gold mine for entrepreneurs and business owners of the Earth. Life took place in a large totally enclosed complex, giant domes that encircled entire cities, there were many types of attractions, even artificial lakes where you could swim and fish, but the most fascinating experience was to leave the colonies with space suits and running, jumping and playing under the weightlessness of that world, those diversions lasted until the warning sound that signaled the critical volume of oxygen was heard.

The young Jonathan went out to play with his friends in one of the safety areas, they jumped reaching impressive heights and threw lunar stones that they saw flying and travelling distances that were impossible to achieve on earth. For several days a crater that was outside the safety zone had caught Jonathan's attention, he thought he saw lights coming out from there, so he planned to jump the wall that separated the area from the colonies and those that were considered unknown. The daring young man making use of his great ability to climb trees and taking advantage of the distracted sen-tinels climbed the rough walls like a spider and went to the other side, there he ran to the crater, climbed the black sands and reached the highest part of the hole, he looked down and lost his balance falling into the depths of the hole.

As he fell, Jonathan watched as the irregular circle that was the mouth of the crater looked smaller and smaller, like closing and limiting the number of white stars in the black moon sky, he then felt a blow to his back and got plunged into a stream of groundwater, Jonathan managed to get afloat but was dragged by the strong flow of water. The young man was draged in a straight line through the dark aquifer, Jonathan could see thanks to the lights built into his helmet visor, he suddenly observed that in the slope of the tunnel someone with some sort of flashlight extended their hand to rescue him, he managed to hold on to them and they took him out of the current. Jona-than fell to the solid ground exhausted, he raised his head and with astonishment saw that the person who had rescued him was a young girl, but she was wearing normal clothes without any protection. The girl asked the bewildered Jonathan to take his space helmet off, he looked at her in amazement, she was the most beautiful girl that his eyes had ever seen.

After hesitating Jonathan was convinced to take his helmet off, he took a big breath and was surprised when he realized he could breathe normally, "how is this possible?" Jonathan asked the girl, but she told him that before answering they should leave the tunnel. She took the young man’s hand and together they entered another transversal tunnel, a few meters away they found a rocky wall, the girl lit the road with her flash-light and focused the light on a square that seemed carved in the black rock, then the wall disappeared before his eyes. After the threshold there was a very well lit corridor with very white and polished walls, when passing this threshold the rock reappeared closing the hall, Jonathan and the girl entered some kind of elevator and when went up the astonished Jonathan asked the girl again, "how is this possible?", she told him that her name was Ada and that she was taking him to her city, which was hidden in the bowels of the Moon, the city was called Selenite.

When the man colonized the moon, a group of environmental engineers and scientists disagreed with the indiscriminate exploitation of the lunar geography and decided to fight against the big companies that financed the extraction of the minerals, this group were the selenites. A great economic crisis along with the pressures of the group paralized the colonization and they intentionally left the dissident men and women to die in the craters as a punishment, but thanks to the fact that they had a lot of materi-als, food and machines they managed to survive and with much effort they made an underground city, they were able to improve the technology to the point that they managed to control gravity and create an atmosphere capable of being breathed by them.

With the help of a group of Selenites, Jonathan was returned to his colony, but he had fallen in love with Ada. From time to time they secretly met near the crater, from there they looked at the stars and how the blue of the earth was born in the black lunar hori-zon. Over the years the Selenite city was discovered and destroyed, but Jonathan man-aged to save Ada and her family, they had to travel to the earth to escape, where Ada and her parents had to start a new lifetime. When there was a full moon, Ada would go with Jonathan to the beach, there they would sit on the shore and Ada would remem-ber her life on the moon, they would watch with nostalgia as the bright moon emerged from the waters of the earth.