We’re all doctors here on the moon.

Doctors, and agricultural horticulturalists.

Meaning we all know how to run the greenhouses. Some of us used to be farmers, and studied medicine when we heard about the program. Others are the other way around.

So we’re set here is what I’m saying. Everyone has a general MD training with one or two specialities – cardiology, psychiatry. Even the engineers, the astronomers, whatever. Double medical training and hydroponics.
The cook, who makes those great au gratin potatoes? She is a brain surgeon and a midwife.

I’m just saying, we’re covered for every eventuality here. Enough food and so on for well past our natural life expectancies. Extra air just in case, you know. Meteorites or something like that.

A lot of us, soon as we got here, spent a lot of time watching the Earth.

Earth-gazing.

That sounds like something some idiot back on Earth would make up.
Most of us got tired of that faster than we expected we would. Although it does look cool, Earth at night, all the lights and the fires from the volcanoes. Earth during the day, you know, blue and white. Coolest is during a total eclipse, when our shadow drags across the planet.

What do they think of that now, I wonder? Do they invest such events with some ominous significance now, or is is the same as always, you know, Gee, eclipse, now get back to work. Don’t look directly at it you moron.

I don’t really pay much attention to it anymore except when it’s night on Earth and there’s a really big eruption. Some of the larger active ones, like Etna or St. Helens, they’re glowing pretty good right now.

It didn’t exactly come as a surprise.

That was what populated the program to begin with, this vague feeling of dread we all had. Walking down the sidewalk, we felt it vibrate. Walking through an intersection, we looked six ways, not just four. We checked for angels falling from the sky and demons bursting up through the crosswalk.

As if the planet had reached its capacity.

Not exactly its capacity to support life. More like its capacity to take any more crap.

The musician, he studied physical therapy and farming. He got drunk recently and fell on his violin, and no one was really all that shook up.

You can get enough of the violin.

There’s none of that vibration here on the moon. Things are quiet here. Now and then a meteorite strikes and you feel something for a minute, but that’s it.

We have lots of board games.

We have tv shows and movies. If you sat and watched them, one after the other, it would take you more than 800 years to watch all of them.

And that’s not counting the pornography some of us snuck. Some think elevated levels of cosmic radiation are to blame for the data rot on our porn. Right now, only two DVDs work: Monkey Dungeon and My Lovely Assistant. One of the engineers (eye-ears-nose and throat) is trying to restore some of the others.

We have no communication with the Earth. That was part of the plan.

Another shuttle, the final one, was supposed to arrive last week with more participants.

It’s a little strange. But we’re safe here.