I spent the larger part of the morning looking through diagrams, solving equations, making sure that everything is ready for the next trip to mine into the core of the moon. It’s been busy, very busy, but I love being busy. I love using my mind and challenging myself and having something to take up my attention. It’s a buzzing, light sort of feeling.

But, as much as I like doing math, I have to take breaks. Which is why I’m taking one right now.

I walk out of my rooftop office, in the largest building in this district, and I lean over the twisting, whirling railing to see the many shapes and colours of the hap-hazardous city far underneath me. It’s beautiful, earth is beautiful. I think about how strange it is, that I’m on earth, but I’m preparing all the details for a project that is hundreds of thousands of kilometres away, on the moon. But everything is all connected now. You can work from anywhere, wherever the project is. And you can access information from anywhere too.

Underneath me the people and cars go by. The cars I can see, each one a hulking enclosure of creative design. The people on their hoverboards, I can’t see, since they’re so small, they’re so far away. Even in the daytime, the city is glowing with lights. Lights from the buildings, lights from the vehicles, lights from the roads. It’s like I am in a sea of brightness. It’s all so pretty. I get lost in the view of the city.

I love looking at the city, but I think I’m in the mood to hear a song while I do it. I think this thought into my embedded earpiece, invisible in my skull. It hears my thoughts, and scans my brain activity to determine exactly what type of song I’m in the mood for. This whole process takes only a few moments. The music then projects out of my earpiece, into the air. It hits my ears as if it is from the environment all around me, as if the earpiece is not there at all, as if I’m hearing music from the outside world.

The tune is simple. Not really what I was in the mood for, but I don’t mind. And soon enough, a mournful, melancholy voice is singing, not any words, just notes right now. I don’t know why my earpiece decided to project this music onto me. It must be malfunctioning. I’m not in the mood for a sad song at all. Oh well, I don’t want to look into it now, I just want to relax. I guess I’ll bear this song. I look back down at the city.

/You see me, see me, when my heart is shattered into bits

You see me at the end of my rope when I’m out of wit

Everyone around me doesn’t understand my heart

Yet you’re here beside me even when we are apart

And there you stand

Melting into my soul

And there you heal

Make me become more whole

And there you are

Forever shine unmarred

Up by the stars

So close though you’re so far

You’re with me, with me, when I feel alone and feel unheard

You’re with me when I’m feeling so confused and so deterred

When I feel like nothing when I feel like just a thing

I listen to the silent, flowing melody you bring

And there you stand

Melting into my soul

And there you heal

Make me become more whole

And there you are

Forever shine unmarred

Up by the stars

So close though you’re so far

Oh mother moon, you mother me

I am an echo of your grace

Oh mother moon, your beauty

Lets me know I have a place

I have a place in your light

And we will set the world to rights

With your adoring, stalwart flight

You’re stronger than the wealthy’s might

Oh mother moon, you mother me

You mother me

And there you stand

Melting into my soul

And there you heal

Make me become more whole

And there you are

Forever shine unmarred

Up by the stars

So close though you’re so far/

I’m crying. I don’t know why I’m crying. I shouldn’t be. It’s not even a good song. It’s not even well-written. But I can tell from the melody that it’s old. It’s really old. I don’t know how it’s gotten to end up on the Wavework, and I don’t know how it ended up being played for me. But there is a certain quality to it. A quality which I cannot put my finger on, a quality which I cannot define.

I don’t know why, but I tell my earpiece to play another song like that one, and I sit down along the screens that adorn the outside of the walls of my office, looking up at the blue sky. Another old song plays.

/You’re not beautiful

You’re not beautiful they tell you.

But the way the moon

The way the moon shines on you

It casts a light

It makes my soul ignite

The way it makes you glow

More glory than you know

She knows the true beauty you hold

She sees the true glories untold

And so do I, boy, so do I

Without you I’d die, boy, without you I’d die/

I lose myself in the song. There are not too many instruments. The tune is not intricate, the notes aren’t that hard to reach. I can tell that this was a song made by a normal person, way back in history, when the people who wrote songs didn’t have much in the way of anything, weren’t professionals with long educations, were farmers and tradespeople and beggars. I can tell that it was composed with the instruments he had at hand. But the words. Oh, the words. I have no words.

They’re not even clever words, I don’t know why I like them.

But anyways, I let myself be taken away, by song after song after song after song. They’re not all about the moon. Some are about the sun or the stars or the sky or the water or the eagles. Some are about the rains or the snow or the sky. Some are about the trees or the animals or the lichen or the moss. Some are about the grasses or the wild berries. Some are only about other people, either other individual people or about whole groups of people. Some are about stories I have never heard, stories I have no clue about.

People used to be so poetic, in the times long ago, in the times long since passed by. They weren’t poetic at all, not really, but still, they had this quality to them that … I don’t know, it made everything so much more poetic. In a much more intimate way, in a much more human way. In a way that is unadorned and plain and gritty, yet so, so much more real.

I have no idea how long I have been sitting here. I need to get back to my work. And so I pull myself up off the roof floor. And I push myself back through my office doors.

I reach my schematics and diagrams and I look through them. But a feeling of deep, deep dread washes through me, sudden and unannounced.

It’s not right. It’s not right. It’s so, so, so very not right. I cannot tell why it is not right but it just isn’t. I just know that it just isn’t. I know it in a way I’ve never known anything before. I know it from a place inside myself that I have never investigated. It washes over me, this horrible realization that I will never, ever be able to explain to any of the people around me. Everything, everything that we are doing here, everything that I have done all my life, it is wrong. It is so, so deeply wrong. And we need to stop. We need to stop. We so, so very deeply need to stop.

I turn back towards the doors, and walk out, desperate to do the task that I have come up with, before I come to my senses. I reach the railing of the roof. And I throw myself over it. As my throat and gut sink, as I fall, my spirit flies.