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His first day staying in the Mare Serenitates Lodge, Arthur Meisner VI was exultant with joy, he could not be happier. How it could be another way when he, a worthy descendant of the great Arthur Meisner’s II, the Moon’s conquerors leader, was just a step to fulfill his destiny: to command an exploratory mission for the establishment of a colony in the Alfa Centauri System. Admission to the Lodge was the final requirement.
By the third day, solitude started playing dirty tricks. The mandatory isolation of thirty Earth days was a hard task, used to gauge the Aspirants’ self-control; someone too accustomed to the human company could fall into desperation. The compartment had all of the indispensable things to cover any necessity, so that the only interaction was with the main computer, through a panel recessed in the wall; however, its metallic, monochord voice could increase the uneasiness in stress situations.
Doubts, unthinkable less than 24 hours before, came out of the darker corners of his subconscious. What would happen if he was turned down? Would they consider him worthy of such a responsibility? Was he sure of being doing the right thing? The questions changed, increased, or repeated themselves; though, they remained floating in the air, unanswered. After torturing himself for hours, he found solace by turning his attention toward the void of the space, the stars, and, of course, the Earth, through the skylight placed on the ceiling, above his bed. He could appreciate the change from day to night on Earth, the turning on of thousands, millions of little lights, pure demonstration of the frantic human activity.
Impotence took the leading role on the fourth day of reclusion. The Lodge had a strict dress code. It was demanded the Aspirant gentlemen, for the Initiation Ceremony, to wear a black tuxedo, a pocket watch, cane and cufflinks, both decorated with the family sigil, plus white gloves and a silk handkerchief, also white, with his initials embroidered in golden thread, all that seasoned with a black top hat, of no more than thirty centimeters high. When Arthur set out to check his attire, give it a last once over, he discovered the lack of the hat.
“What do I do? What do I do now?” he whispered while holding the want to scream, pacing back and forth in his elegant compartment. Fortunately, the artificial gravity kept him grounded, otherwise, he would have made true the old saying: he would climb the walls. “How could I leave it at home?”
The previous day’s doubts restarted the attack, they stung him without mercy. He knew of Aspirants, with impeccable capacity, whose prestige they had ruined because of a torn button or a thread out of place. “How are we going to trust command in anybody who doesn’t carry out something so simple?”, he seemed to be hearing the Master of Ceremonies, before whom had placed all their confidence in him. He could picture his parents, companions, and friends' disappointment. He couldn’t lift his face again, confront the looks of disapproval. He wouldn’t be capable of watching his reflex. His worst nightmare had come true.
All his dreams and illusions, his future, were at the stake. They depended upon a stupid hat, which laid at that moment hundreds of kilometers away, in his colony module, south of the Sea of Tranquility, on his desk for sure, along with maps and navigation gadgets. He remembered to have felt ridiculous wearing the anachronistic piece, just arrived in the last transport from the planet, along with the rest of the demanded objects. Used as he was to wear his modern pressurized suit, as pleasant as a second skin, Arthur couldn’t help but laugh when he looked in the mirror and watched the whole ensemble.
Trapped in the Lodge as he was, joy, happiness, any feeling similar to wellbeing, became estrange concepts for him, distant despite having experimented them all his life. Fear to failure, an unknown sensation till the previous day, was raising King on the Mountain.
He could send for the hat. However, he put that thought aside the moment it showed in his mind, for it would not only destroy him, the dishonor would splash his family out. Nobody should know of his mistake. He was bound to deal with it in person.
To return to the colony was unthinkable but, as any satellite native, he knew that in the Apollo Crater, in the wrongly called Dark Side, it was possible to find anything. There were two ways out of his confinement: the access, closed by the outside, reinforced by a code, plus a biometric safe; and the skylight above his bed, with about twenty centimeters of diameter.
Fortunately, he had time to think of a solution.
It is the appointed day, the twenty-seventh since hell unleashed. The compartment door is opened to make way for the person in charge to escort him to the Great Hall. The man doesn’t get to utter a word since Arthur, dressed head to toe as the protocol dictates, brandishes multiple times the cane against his head, while sets all his strength on each stroke. He stops when the embossing of the family sigil, engraved in the knob, changes from silver to a bright red.
With cool calm, he cleans the cane with his handkerchief, returns the now unrecognizable piece of silk to his pocket, and leans to pick the victim’s access card up. He will use it to find the best way to the hangar in the computer. There awaits him his ship, Lyra, one of the fastest in the satellite, ready to break another speed record.
Avoiding stepping on the blood, he goes out to the lonely hallway and closes the door behind him. Every time he comes across an access panel, he verifies if his absence has been reported.
Already in the hangar, deserted since all the personal is occupied at the ceremony, he programs the exit gates opening. Once in the exterior, he goes towards the Dark Side in a straight line. When the change from clear to dark on the surface becomes evident, he executes a one-hundred and eighty degrees wide curve. He goes back to the Lodge.
When he’s approaching, instead of heading down to the hangar, he goes straight towards the Great Hall area, a dome of translucent material that outstands next to the main structure. He can see the other Aspirants, ladies, and gentlemen from another time, while they enter into the crowded hall.
He doesn’t decrease the speed.
They ignore what charges against them.
“Structural integrity 10%. Air pressure 25%, decreasing,” announce the friendly voice, almost maternal, of the on-board computer, seconds before the violent impact.
Arthur Meisner VI doesn’t listen. Before his feverish, haggard eyes, it descends, with an infuriating slowness, a top hat. While life leaves him, a dark smirk is drawn on his lips, the final gesture that will torment those who come to the disaster zone, for the rest of their lives.
No one will take away his mission.