Chapter 2: Sight and Sound

The raft lies askew in its final resting spot. Opened canisters are strewn while straps loll off the side, dirtied in the moondust. I’m under the craft familiarizing myself with the structure and damage beneath while Kommo-o finishes moving our essentials inside the lander. My flashlight’s pale cone drags over bulky supports and cluttered wiring made from a time fallen behind. Scratches dig in by the joints, bangs dent many bars, and scorch marks paint the fine silver in ugly black and browns. All signs of use and love, but nothing that’s broken. Not on the outside. All time has done to the machine since it last flew was fade its colours.

Kommo-o comes down the ladder jutting out the side of a landing leg. The shadow of his large figure looms to my side. “How’s it looking? Will it work?”

I’m caught ducking underneath a beam. Bending my free arm to hit the comms button is unwieldy. “Yes. It must have been abandoned for being at the end of its life cycle, nothing here would have been worth recycling then. It’ll be safe.”

His form bends forward. “What about the structure?”

I shine the light his way. He’s examining one of the uglier beams, which looks like it’d crack under firm pressure. But that’s just looks. “Nothing wrong.”

He buzzes in his channel again just to chuckle. I smirk too, but add more. “It resting here may have pushed it past some margins of error, but, y’know…” safer than a car drive. “It’ll be stiff and unbalanced, though. All fixable.”

The figure bounces away. “Anything you’ll need me to do?”

I look around the center. Barren of sensors, much like the rest of the frame. Definitely built in a time blindly romantic about electronic solutions. “We’ll need its computers going. Most gauges are digital-only”

My partner hobbles back. He’s already got a tablet in one claw outstretched to me, a laptop held under the other.

---

Getting the electronics live took time. Kommo-o said many aspects, such as data formats and communication protocols, are archaic. The manual he had to reference was in a language he’s rusty at and slowing him further were his mittened claws being too large for the footprint-labeled keyboard. Each key is pressed with the tip of a fist-clenched pen. But this is his expertise, and he’s faster than me.

The spinning loading dial on my tablet finally fades out for a UI to light up instead. Columns of numbers in a robotic font scroll past the bottom, while a dropdown list at the top stretches with a red-to-green gradient. Digital buttons stylized as realistic levers and switches with unconvincing lighting stud the side.

The theatrics makes me want to vomit but the program underneath is the same used for the last half-century, even if a few hundred versions behind. I know it better than Moncrosoft Guild Footnotes. 

“I got it from here, thank you,” I say.

“Yup. I’ll work us out getting back to Earth,” Kommo-o says.

---

Pokemon have dreamed of walking the moon for millennia and many would trade all they have in life for just ten minutes of where I’m at. I’d take those offers, even if the world wasn’t ending. The minutes blur into hours as I press a button, wait, get a number, press more buttons, get more numbers, and again, and again, and again. They’re each tweaked until they show green and not a single digit starts out already complete. A lot of the problems were due to lubricant. Although we brought more than enough, siphoning droplets out is lengthy, especially because we can’t add too much. This numbers game had to be done multiple times for each leg, and the controls around the thruster had even more monotonous adjustments. And nothing’s to say of the pain of multiple controls affecting overlapping numbers. I keep my mind from dying by looking at the moon shards periodically. Each time, there’s more black and less white. More of the trickling shimmer has morphed into steady streams of soft rosy colours. It’s beautiful.

I remember I’m not alone. I press my chest. “How’s it coming along?”

“I can’t find a way back to Earth from here. There’s a nearby station above us we’re going to instead.”

I shuffle out from underneath to look up at him. He’s curled up with his neck and head bent under the ceiling, side pressed against our supplies, and tail clenched between his legs.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

He doesn’t notice I’m looking at him. He couldn’t have heard me move, after all. “There’s no way to measure where we are in relation to Earth. The satellites this used for that don’t exist anymore. Like-” his eyes flick to the black sky above. He searches, even though there are only faint stars above. “-probably discontinued before all this happen. But I know where we are in relation to this space station. It’s faster to go there and connect to new satellites.”

I grimace and rub the back of my helmet, despite being unable to feel my paw. The larger Pokemon finally notices me. “It’ll also take an hour and a half for these calculations to complete. The lander’s just slow with data. The way it’s encrypted, the way it’s compressed, all with no bandwidth. It’s-”

He must see my unhappy face, as he wistfully turns his head away. I stand and stare longer but I get back underneath eventually. I work at a lazier speed, knowing I’ll finish before him. He radios me again not much later. “Hey, we’ll get back to Earth. It’ll take time but we have it. And we’re bound to hear from someone else waiting up there.”

I let a breath out through my nostrils but I don’t reply otherwise. My turn to avoid thinking about things. 

Instead, I think of the dreadful silence I chose. There’s only my breath and heartbeat to listen to. I pretend to hear clacks of switches pressing and whirring mechanical machines as I play with the software, but that toy hardly entertains me. Especially with this new number taking seconds between each tick.

I shake my head and look back out to the evolving horizon. One of the smaller islands has a tiny speck of untouched white at its corner. The void encroaches on it, dimming it until it’s darker than the space behind it. It’s all so far away.

He interrupts me once more. His tone is cozier. “Hey, you know it’s going to be cramped in here as we go up?”

I flick my eyes up. Surprised and confused, I listen close. 

“Like, we’ll be right up against each other, you know.”

The frown melts. My brow presses in, unsure to be annoyed or interested. “Go on.”

“Think you’ll be comfortable all huddled up against me?”

I smile. “I think it’d be nice. I can hold on tight.” I look in his direction, despite the metal shell between us.

“Yeah. We keep that going even when we reach the station. Get to know each other better.”

My smile grows. “Plenty of time to be together, with no one to interrupt us.”

“Yeah…” He says, energy descending across the single word.

The corner of my mouth stretches back as I realize what I’m saying. My head eases back down to the screen, where the number stays still. The silence comes back, even emptier now. I can’t stand it for long. “Hey, sorry, I, uh, didn’t…”

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m glad I have you.”

“Me too. Thank you.”

The time doesn’t feel so blurry now. I even forget about the silence. All I think of is Kommo-o now.

---

The hole on the largest rock stretches its edge to the top and bottom, making a gaping maw. Huge globs of liquid pool at the bottom, growing until its weight teeters it over the side. They float down all at once and shoot up hazy pink mist when it impacts. The sedated tempo makes it reminiscent of lava lamps. 

I watch all this sitting at the top of the onboarding ladder. Occasionally, I’ll scroll through the program to check each number. I hope one will unfix itself, but as is the only possible outcome, they stay steady. Then look back up. My partner’s stuck crossing his arms while text whizzes by the monitor, too fast to mean anything. Data’s being fed to the space station, so there’s nothing he can do but wait a few more minutes. Then we’re done.

I want to talk to him, and I think of many things to say, but I’m lacking courage. I don’t even know why. All I want to do is pass time until he can move things forward again. So I pay attention to my senses to get there faster. The curl of my toes, the suit against my fur, a faint sterile smell mingling with my ordour. A faint buzzing is in my ears and when I tune into the aura around me, a powerful flame kindles behind me, and soft breeze flows in front of me.

I look down we came. Where we were thirty minutes before arriving, the odd zigzagging ooze slops around.

I drift my hand to the button. “That liquid, have you noticed it?”

“Yeah, I’ve kept an eye on it. It won’t reach us before we go.” 

We don’t have options anyways. The shimmering fluid fills the dips in the sand, whether they’re footprints or small craters. It doesn’t flow into each other, instead it rises out of the moon like groundwater. I wait.

I was right to forget about it. When it closes only a sixth of the remaining distance, Kommo-o buzzes in to say we’re three-quarters way done. Yet, the aura I sense is now a gentle gale. Even if it’s middling, sensing such strength that distance away would make it the most powerful entity I’ve ever met. The ringing in my ears has also grown and evolved. Cries of different Pokemon, young and old, whisper into my ears. It bothers me. Sound doesn’t travel through a vacuum. “Do you hear any screaming?” I ask.

There’s a long pause. A baby Vulpix cries in this time. It travels around my ears like a lost baby. “Yes,” he says. A delay later, “don’t worry about it. We’re gone soon.”

“Hmm.” I place my mitten under my helmet, to the side, and lean my head. The lonely pleas of the fox whittle away to whimpers as the next puddle fills. Even if we’re safe, doing nothing isn’t sitting right with me. I think through the safety meetings I’ve had over my career, then everything I was taught about problem-solving, but I do not know what the hazard or problem is. I think of strategy next. A buried notion resurfaces, about how you always take chances to safely gain more information.

I climb down the ladder. My buddy doesn’t react. Trash of many shapes rest on the raft: excess operation fluids and chemicals, empty ration boxes, spent oxygen tanks, cases for electronics, undeeded wire, and more. I pick up a toolbox whose contents we merged with one that’s currently on the craft. My digits flex around the handle comfortably. My arm arcs and I chuck it into the air. 

My plan is to put something between it and us so if we have a fatal delay or it pulls a speedy surprise, I can examine what it does to the case. The information will give us a small advantage before we die. I threw too late, though: the pitch is low and will only land a lecture hall’s length away. Five minutes away in these terrible suits.

It inches to the peak and hovers there before easing the other way with the gentleness of a feather. I pick up the laptop case to throw it as a frisbee. It zooms off to my right. My muzzle bunches up and I heave an empty gas cell with both arms into the air. It flies so high that I don’t think it’s coming back down.

I can make out individuals in the screaming. Some are wailing while others are between laughter and terror. They come in all directions, even above and below me, and the aura has grown to match Kommo-o’s. I’m about to throw a bulky ration box over my shoulder before noticing the toolbox has approached the ground faster than I thought. Its corner floats down like an angel from heaven. It leans in close, and smooches the sand.

Shrieking cacophony shreds my ears. I hold my helmet in both arms and shake but the piercing choir doesn’t fall out of my head. I force my eyes open and look where the case touches. A purple-pink pool swells there, thin channels branching out into the dust. 

A voice rises above the others. “Lucario, what did you do!?”

The shrills join into an unholy unison. The pain makes my feet stumble. I clench my teeth and throw my head back up, I have done this for a reason. The distant zag stays far separated from the muck in front of us that ripples onto now-blemished sand. The submerged toolbox rises out, dry and unbound by gravity. Darkness grows at its corner and crawls across its face.

“Lucario!? What’s happening!?”

Throughout all this, the aura does not shrink or grow. It has already arrived.