Chapter 18

I’ve been afraid of changing

You don’t really realize what you have been missing until it slaps you in the face sometimes.

When I was growing up, I had loving parents that doted on me, an older sister that loved and tormented me, as sisters are supposed to do. I had grandparents who loved and spoiled me. There was always laughter and love, hugs and loving embraces.

And yet, after the death of my parents and fiancé, all of that emotional support was stripped away from me and I had worked hard to build a shell around myself, so that I would never feel that pain and that loss again. But if the last few months had cracked that shell, the next few months were going to obliterate it.

Sure enough, when Tom heard that Mary was expecting, the Space Command leadership made sure that the best obstetrician and the scientist who studied reproduction in low gravity environments were quickly on their way to Luna, and they visited us fairly regularly. They even promised to come up on the thirty-sixth week and stay with us until Mary had the baby, even if that took a couple of months. So, the worry I had about getting medical care for her was quickly wiped away.

The only downside to this, was that somehow word got out to the press that there was a pregnant woman on the Moon. So, they were hounding anyone who was associated with Lunar Base to see if they could figure out who it might be.

Finally, Mary’s father, after a discussion with us, decided to take the news that he was going to be a grandfather public.

This news opened the door to releasing the information that Mary, Xina and Karen were alive and well and living on Luna. Since nuking the State into oblivion, the terrorist attacks had all but stopped and people were more concerned with avoiding radiation fallout than avoiding terrorist attacks.

Of course, there were numerous requests for interviews, and offers for book and video deals, but no one wanted to expose our family to that level of scrutiny.

And we didn’t need the money. We were doing well being self-sufficient. With the income from my skimming, and the family wealth of all of us, we were doing quite well. One of the positive effects of being ruled alive, as was the case for my women, was that they inherited their estates.

Xina was now independently wealthy, owning her family’s mining assets in Australia. Karen was not quite as wealthy, but she also had a nice nest egg that would support her for the rest of her life. And while Mary didn’t inherit any estate as her parents were still alive, she did have a trust fund that provided nicely for her.

So, we really didn’t need the money. In fact, Mary’s father had set us up with a financial firm that was working to manage our money as best they could.

When the obstetrician arrived at our habitat, you would think that she was moving in with us. She had ultrasound machines, heart monitors, exam tables, and even the equipment that might be needed to do a C-section. There were bags of supplies and all kinds of nutritional supplements and baby food.

Of course, all this equipment had to go somewhere, and so we piled it all into the family room. I knew we would need to expand the habitat, but I thought I would have a bit more time.

Fortunately, the mining and processor had done the lion’s share of the work, creating tunnels below the habitat that we could expand into. Given that we wanted to prevent as much radiation exposure as possible, we planned to move our bedroom and new baby room into the lower-level tunnels.

So rather than skimming, I found myself working in the tunnels, shoring up an older tunnel, sealing it and then running electricity and plumbing to the new area. It was on the same level as the living space, one level below the current bedroom, and allowed us to expand the kitchen and working area on the first level.

I spent a couple of weeks doing this, and when I checked my messages, I realized that we had tons of offers for interviews, book and movie deals, this time looking to tell the story of the first human born on the moon. I was even less interested in exposing my unborn child to the press jackals than I was in exposing myself.

However, two endorsement deals stood out to me. One was an offer from Gerber to provide free baby food for my growing family. The other came from Fisher-Price who offered cribs, toys and all sorts of kid paraphernalia. It seems they were interested in how things might work in a low gravity environment and so they promised to send us items if we would give them feedback on how they worked or how they might be improved. I responded to both of those, as they seemed to be reasonable deals and minimally invasive to our privacy.

On the more invasive side, a couple of weeks after her initial visit, the obstetrician, Dr. Shander, set up an appointment where she wanted to discuss a research project with us. Since our care was free, courtesy of Space Command, I felt somewhat obligated to cooperate with her on the project.

In brief, she wanted to do monthly scans on the baby to track its development and then continue to follow the child until the age of majority, at which point they would need to get their consent to continue.

“Since this will be the first child born in a low gravity environment, there is debate about how it will affect bone structure and growth. Even muscles may develop differently,” she explained when she reviewed why they wanted to study the development of the baby.

“We even have ten mothers Earthside that are at a similar stage of pregnancy to serve as a control for this baby. We will be doing the exact same tests and scans on them to ensure that we aren’t introducing a bias into our observations.”

They completed the exam while I made myself busy in the greenhouse doing manly things, like move dirt. With three women, who all wanted to be mothers, my role was rather limited to the donation of genetic material. At least until the little tyke got to be of a size where I could teach them how to survive in this environment.

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A man, nearly broken by loss, lives a solitary existence off planet earth in a small habitat he has constructed on the moon.

Skimmer

Lorn Skye

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