'Sisyphus and the Moon'

By Krazydiamond

Snapping the last buckles into place proved a monumental effort.

It wasn't the suit, though the wear and tear was evident. He wore it day in and day out, for the length of a full rotation between rests. It was dinged and scarred by the minutiae debris surrounding the moon, locked in an orbiting path to scrape and grate on the alloys of the suit. Just like him, locked to a constant path of push and pull, a thankless task he'd endured for innumerable years now. The buckles of the suit formed permanent dents in the edges of his fingers where he had tugged and latched them into place, every day, twice a day, until the buckle etched itself into his bones in curved indents.

There was nothing wrong with the suit's latches today, but the weight of his days dragged on him. What was so different about today? What set it apparent from the endless coil of time curling behind him, spent in the stark surroundings of the station. What brought him here?

Somewhere, amid the endless repetitive routine, he'd forgotten why.

The buckles latched in place, sealing him in the suit. He rose to his feet, marching to the end of the hall where the hatch waited. It was simply routine now. His mind drifted as his body went through the motions; entering the punch code, holding tight to the handles as the inner and out hatches revolved in opposite synchronized orbits, sealing the ship behind him as the outside space gripped him hard and held him tight. The pressure was a distant discomfort, temporary, habitual, everything a repeat performance of the previous day. Nothing changes.

Why am I here?

Tetherhook in hand, he clamped the line and pushed off, his path straight, direct, swimming through stardust and echoes of light to his destination.

It was a small planet, minuscule compared to his home. Elysium was miniature paradise floating through space, blissfully unaware its entire population relied on the manpower of a selected individual for its continued survival.

'Selected individual'....what a joke. It came to him in bits now, strained through the monotony of his memory. The station wasn't merely a job, or an honor, it was a punishment to fit his crime.

His body brushed against his destination. Now the real work would be begin. The station's logs dubbed it the Boulder. Proportional to the tiny planet it orbited, the Boulder was Elysium's moon. At barely twice his size, it was his job to push.

Elysium was a younger world, infantile in its creation, and still in the early stages of supporting sentient life. Unfortunately, it was a tiny world, one that was missed by the great construction crews of the Free Confederacy, a collection of galaxies with a common governing system. In their haste to establish interplanetary ports and travel ways, their neglect of Elysium created unforeseen consequences for the developing world, the largest being a degradation to the planet's gravity. Its moon could no longer complete an orbit around the planet without aid.

The Free Confederacy's solution for such a massive blunder was to build the station. Self-sustaining, requiring a maintenance crew to fix it up every five years, it required only one person to perform the task of pushing the boulder through a half cycle before the planet's own gravity gained enough momentum to take over. Every day, he grappled the Boulder across the planet's night drenched half, an endless expanse of stars to his left and the winking lights of the planet to his right.

It was hard to gauge how time passed on Elysium's surface. It seemed he would blink and things changed, the outlines of countries, scrolled in lines of civilization, population densities as bursts of light in the corner of his vision. Not that it mattered, his attention was focused on the boulder, always the boulder, pushing it on its path. An endless, futile task, but it was his to bear.

Simply because he laughed in the face of Death.

The Free Confederacy was in a time of new peace. After decades spent in war after pointless war, and suffering a monumental loss of life across dozens of worlds, the warring factions put up and shut up, holding a peace summit in order to survive themselves. Treaties were signed, laws and codes of conduct were drawn up, and peace was declared. The message took a while to sink in across a thousand worlds, particularly to the border planet he inhabited, in a run down journeyman waystation, the last rest stop before the leap to the interstellar highway. He was once town mayor, of a sort, as close to one as you could get in a near lawless corner of a cesspit, and a member of a faction at war with everyone at once. Communications were never reliable or timely on Ephyra. It was weeks before confirmation of the treaties came through the line, hollow and tinny, echoing the pleas of those he'd murdered in the name of his faction. Of course a scoundrel would claim the worlds were at peace to avoid dying at the business end of a bolt gun. How was he to know their words held truth? He certainly didn't expect their deaths to bring the newly minted Watchmen of the Free Confederacy to come knocking at his door, demanding an explanation for his actions.

He recognized their lead bruiser, who wouldn't, the man was a damn war hero. Thanatos earned the name 'Death on Steel Wings' for his piloting skills and firing accuracy. He'd been in my dogfights than anyone left alive and bore the scars of survival to prove it. Thanatos looked down his crooked nose at the Mayor of Ephyra, one eye filled with scar tissue, and chewed him out six ways to Sunday for his supposed crimes.

He'd fought Thanatos's decree, he'd be a fool to take it and roll with his belly up so Death could slice him open from navel to nostril.

There was no news of a negotiated peace, he said, nothing for weeks. It was business as usual, killing to survive, killing to maintain their faction's strength. He had done nothing outside the boundaries of war time.

He might have gotten away with it too, if he'd left Death well enough alone. Thanatos and his men crashed at the waystation for the night, leaving Ephyra's mayor with far too much time to think himself into a hole of his own making. Why let Death roam free when he could be kept pinned?

It was a simple matter to drug Thanatos and his men. When the watchmen woke in the bunker the next day, disoriented and weak, he'd locked up the lot of them and thrown away the key, offering Thanatos a cruel smile by way of explanation.

He could have left them too starve but the influence and reach of Thanatos was further than he realized. The man's reputation as Death on Steel Wings carried over into his profession,

Funny thing. If you chain up Death, the people he's supposed to be claiming for the sake of the law don't die. That kind of slip up gets noticed faster than a few errant murders by an ignorant Mayor. The Watchmen of the Free Confederacy descended on Ephyra with fury and bluster. Thanatos and his men were released, and there he was, the damn leader of his people, hauled up on trumped up charges while Thanatos growled in his face.

The new laws of brokered peace was a double edged sword. In the old days, they would have tossed his ass into the frozen maw of space, leaving his frozen corpse to shatter on a passing asteroid. Now, they had other punishments, ones that made the recipient beg for a merciful death.

Here he was now, pushing a massive rock across the sky, bound to do so not only for his punishment, but for the distant glitter in the corner of his right eye. Let the Boulder float off aimless, detaching from Elysium's orbit, wasn't an option now.

Even he wasn't that big of a bastard.

***

The child stared up at the night sky, resting his chin in his hands as he watched the progress of the moon from his window. His mother entered the room behind him, pausing to ruffle his hair.

"Time for bed, you can watch the Moon God tomorrow."

"Ah Mama can't I watch him for a little while longer?"

She smiled, crouching down beside him. "Do you remember the story of how the Moon God saved us?"

He grinned, missing two of his front teeth. "Of course, Mama, everyone knows that one."

"Oh?" She raised a knowing eyebrow.

He hesitated, sensing his chance to delay sleep for a bit longer. "Could you tell me the story again?"

His mother grinned, wrapping her arms around him as they stared at the night sky together, beholding the moon and the God who pushed it across the sky.

"Thousands of years ago, the world grew sick, hedging on the edge of destruction. Crops failed, the seas raged, and the ground quaked. The moon spun far too slow across the sky. The people believed it signed their end. Then one night, when all hope was lost, the God appeared pushing the moon across the sky. He has watched the people ever since, year after year for time out of mind." She rested her chin on her son's head, holding him close. "He keeps us safe from harm, listens to our prayers, and encourages us to leave good lives. We help one another as he helps us. Now, to bed!"

She settled him beneath the covers, leaning in to kiss his forehead.

"I'll meet him someday, the Moon God," said her son. "I shall build that shall take me up and up into the sky, so I can thank him."

The mother cupped her sweet boy's cheek. "He knows, my darling. The God can feel our gratitude. It is why he continues such a thankless task."

The End