Moondust

Editor’s Note: In response to the Call for Submissions from Writing from the Future, this poem arrived in our chronofluid collection box as reported by Arkaparvo Bhaumik. More messages still to come.

The bell rings,
my shift starts,
oxygen tank on my back,
shovel in hand

We gather dust,
A kilo of it can keep,
New Adelaide lit for a month,
or Ville Bleue lit for two!

Helium three,
fuel of the age,
dust on the moon.
Moondust!

“Avoid pebbles and rocks”,
I hear the foreman say,
“Only the dust”,
his voice blares into my earbud

A trip,
every six months,
of Moon explorers,
to save Mars

Author’s Note: If in a few hundred years a handful of human beings escape the ecological doom of Earth and go to Mars, how will they survive, how will they meet their energy needs? ‘Moondust’ explores one such possibility of mining Helium-3 on the moon.