Short Fiction

What is it like to be alone? This question takes on different answers depending on the situation of loneliness. Some can feel alone in a crowd—isolated, withdrawn or even threatened. Many enjoy the peace and quiet of being alone, shut up in a room or in the outdoors far from civilization. Others will feel afraid of being in a home or building alone, cut off from anyone. Imagine for a moment that you are alone on the moon; the nearest civilization is on a planet that you see on the horizon. The only sound is the sound of your own breath in your helmet as you walk across the barren land or a distant voice on a radio.

This is the setting for Moon Water, a hard science fiction and a space western story about a man who is trapped on the moon without help and without water. Current scientific evidence shows that the moon has water. Imagine that this knowledge is the only thing keeping you going as you roam the dusty land—but also the foreboding that the water needs to be mined, processed, and purified before it can ever quench your thrust.

Moon Water is a man versus nature story. The history and the fiction written of the old west in the United States is filled with people isolated and running out of water, only to have died not far from a watering hole. There are stories like this in every dessert around the world. Just as the case in these stories, so to is the struggle of man on the new frontier searching for his only hope of survival.

The goal is to have this story ready for submission by May.

Thank you for reading and please visit www.davidalanlucas.com for articles, blogs, poetry, and stories I write.