0257 - 2025.10 Moontrap

After my holidays, dragging family around many of the architectural wonders of the modern world, I’m an engineer after all, my next assignment is literally off the planet.

I’m an infrastructure recycling engineer, putting old things to new uses. Not scrap metal, no, no, no! (Although that’s where I started.)

Repurposing pavilions, buildings, bridges, mining quarries, anything big. The bigger the better, as I say.

Industrial sheds may become art galleries, housing estates get turned into to micro-factories, quarries into lakes and desert oasis, since mining is usually somewhere dry and remote.

It just takes imagination and some engineering know how. Sometimes I build a playground.

I got into the business by accident, starting an architectural degree before discovering my real interest lay in construction. The design background gave me ideas, the engineering showed the practical impossibility of most of them.

In between lay the reality of what could be achieved.

Most of my student alumni wanted to go to space, studying precision engineering in micro gravity, or variations thereof. I did old-fashioned macro engineering - the big stuff.

Of course all the good jobs were in space and I wasn’t qualified. Nor was there much work on earth. Cruise ships were in the decline with space tourism ascending, tall buildings had long ago peaked with declining populations and climate change, and I was over qualified for anything else.

My name didn’t help either. Nas I’m called, but it’s short for Nasilyum, an Egyptian Russian mash up. My Uni cohorts had simple names like Chuck and Pete and Buzz and Gus and puffed their bravado to the front of the queue.

I didn’t know it then but my first job was to guide the rest of my career. A part time gig, while I studied, was with a scrap merchant. Chris was his name. So much good stuff going to waste, I thought. Studies completed and lots of spare time, and no fancy job offers, I tinkered with the scrap.

Repurposing into metal sculpture and executive trinkets, I sold a few in the markets. People heard of me and sometimes I got a commission, but you must understand I was still at student poverty levels.

Then one day, for no other reason than he had seen me at the markets, a stranger walked in. I’ve got a shed, he said, it needs repurposing. If you can find a use for it you can have the metal for free. Of course we got the metal for free, that’s the business of scrap, so now he expected us to work for it. Chris and I looked at him.

It’s a big shed, lots of metal, he said, with twinkle in his eye. Maybe make some gizmos out of it.

Sure I thought, instead of paying someone to pull his shed down and bring the metal to us, he’s trying to save some money by getting us to do the work.

We weren’t busy, so we agreed. Terry, that was his name, gave us an address. On the far side of the city Chris and I mentally calculated the transport costs as we drove over.

When we got there there was no shed, nothing made of metal, a building of old bricks in a style a hundred years old, boarded up and dilapidated.

I phoned Terry, are you sure we have the right address? Yes, he said, I’m already here, find gate 7 and come in.

Which we did.

A shed was an understatement.

It was an old railway station, unused for half a century.

“I can’t recycle this.” said Chris.

He’s right, I thought, but what had Terry said? Repurpose.

“Why us?” I asked before Chris could say anything else.

“I saw you at the markets.” Terry replied. “Very creative. I thought you may have some ideas.”

“We’re too small for something this size. Why even ask?”

“As I said, you’re creative. You don’t have any money, I don’t have any money. The big end of town just wants to knock this down, build something boring. I want to give the building another chance.”

So we were tricked, sort of, into giving Terry a day of our time. I wasn’t used to thinking at this scale, so I asked for a week, then another, and put some ideas together. Big ideas, they were, and then we met up with Terry.

“Full disclosure.” said Terry. “I lied to you. But first, what have you got?”

He looked at my rough sketches and notes. Business hub, no. Creator spaces, no. Theme park, no. Alll boring. Community centre, boring. Museum, Ho hum! Anything else? I had one idea left, it was silly and not thought through. Come on, show me he urged. A few sheets of paper. Kids. Maze. Playground. Giant scale. Dangerous, almost. Labyrinthine, definitely. Chris and I would make money by selling Terry scrap metal, not removing it.

“Perfect!” Terry said.

Long story short, he was developing housing all around.but wanted to preserve the old station in some form, make it a centrepiece and not a park or public housing. We formed a partnership, the three of us, and made our reputations.

When it opened no one was allowed in without a tracker, a first aid kit and three litres of water. Several people got lost for two days, enhancing its reputation. In a sterile, bland, safety conscious world the danger proved irresistible; so much so that we had to take bookings and issue tickets and start a rescue team.

Not all our projects were so wild, or so grand,,but the scrap metal recycled look became our trademark design.

Now, twenty years later, I am going to space. My university college contemporaries have been here the whole time, good money to start with that had not compounded into wealth as the labour market became saturated, promotion opportunities dwindled, and space sickness in its many forms proved insidiously life threatening. The gloss had worn off and I had been lucky to have missed it.

I too wondered why someone would ask me to go to space.

It’s what you do, he said. He had a business card that said Pickett. Familiar in a distant way. A decade younger than me so not from school or uni or work.

I repurpose large - and small - structures into new uses.

I know, Pickett replied, twenty years ago I got lost in your first maze for two days. It was the best time I ever had, made new friends and realised my parents were in the helicopter. So now I’ve got something you should see, even if you do nothing with it.

Pickett. Of course, the reason we had a rescue team.

So I agreed, booked two weeks out of the office and stocked up on motion sickness tablets.

Pickett wasn’t flying, I would meet Jjones (spelled with two Js) at the Moon, who then took me a a shuttle ride around to the dark side. Sounds ominous but it was fully sunlit in the current phase and very bright without and grey plains of the maria.

Where to? I asked

Zhiritskiy, Nas.

I thought he was swearing but it was a crater, a real place. Or at least we were going to a mine adjacent to the crater.

Landed. Into a mineshaft, two kilometres down. Weird floaty feeling in the low gravity, the floor of the elevator literally leaving you behind if you didn’t hang on.

We were digging, said Jjones, when we opened up a cavern. Sent a picture to Pickett; he said you need we to see this before word gets out. Insistent, he was. I checked you out, you have no space experience, which shows on your face.

He was right on that count, I was trying not to throw up.

Half a kilometre walk, more like a bunny hop, then we were at s small hole.

Look, said Jjones, handing me a spotlight.

I had no words. A giant cavern, from my viewpoint stalactites hanging, but not the rounded limestone creations so familiar on Earth, but squared off, artificial, constructed. Upside down they vaguely reminded me of the Imperium parliamentary artefacts I had seen on my holiday, but this wasn’t a computer simulation.

Slowly, slowly I had questions. How old? How big? Materials? Who knows about it?

I only got the answer to the last question. I was the seventh person to see it, the eighth to know about it. I called Pickett. Why did you let me see it?

Because, he told me, when I went into your maze nothing before or since had such an impact on me. Nothing, he repeated. It changed my life. I just thought I would repay the debt, before everyone finds out about this place and destroys it.

Why would that happen? I asked naively.

To examine it I need experts and word will spread. I’m guessing but those hanging columns must either be a new form of crystalline structure we don’t know about, or they will have been manufactured. Like the pyramids the lure will prove too great and they will not remain pristine. Maybe the Moon is filled with these, maybe this is the only one. I don’t know. Miners, tourists, ecologists, archeologists, geologists, all of them will leave a mark.

Thank you for letting me see them, I told him, you are right, I will never forget what I just saw. I understand that’s how you felt in my maze. Pretty special.

You have two days to explore, then I announce the discovery, unless you can convince me not to do so.

So what do do? Getting a good sleep is the first requirement, a big day tomorrow.

————————————————————

Now I’m sitting up late, writing this diary entry in the hope it will give me clarity. What can I say that would make Pickett delay an announcement, for that is all he can do in reality. It’s not private property, just an exploration license.

Would another visit give me, an amateur at best, some insight into the formation of the cavern? It’s too beautiful to change.

That’s it. I need a reason to protect it. I’ll have another look tomorrow. That’s Earth time of course, a Moon day is twenty eight times longer.

———————————————————

Well, what a day that was!

I’m conflicted about the cavern.

The image is the far side; of course this side is the same. Jjjames came with me, I wanted to go into the cavern, bring some climbing ropes I requested.

It’s the Moon, we don’t have climbing gear here. Best I can do is a safety harness and some wire cable on a winch.

So that is what we took. Some setting up required, the cable wound from a spool and James spent an hour or two anchoring it. As he said, he could not hold onto the slippery wire wearing a space suit. He also made me sign a waiver, as he thought what I wanted to do was incredibly stupid.

Through the hole, turned around, tried to walk backwards, downwards with the cable extending slowly. Not quite rappelling, but similar.

At first it was moon rock and firm regolith, then as I progressed it was apparent that opening the hole had loosened some of the shards, they had fallen, leaving vertically hanging shards all around me.

I stopped. My next step would be onto a shard, pale yellow metallic in my suit light. Would it resist my weight or be dislodged? That was my thinking. Let me down 20 centimetres I asked.

Turns out, none of the above. It flexed, like a leaf on a tree shedding a raindrop. Worse, the surface was frictionless, so I slipped, fell, nearly cracked my visor. I’m stupid I thought to myself, but in cruder terms.

Bring super slippery there was nothing to hang on to, I was now sideways and thankful the harness was tight. Pull me up slowly, and the cable tightened but I was gripping against the shards. Flailing my arms about like an idiot, I called stop. Jjames asked what’s the problem?

I’m stuck.

He put his head through the gap and looked at me, just 3 metres below him. What do you mean stuck?

I thought for a moment or three. Slippery one way, grippy the other. Impossible. I looked at the shard surface, but whatever was there was probably nanoparticles, too fine to see.

I explained the problem. Good thing you signed that waiver! He replied. Ok, I’ll go back and get some help. Don’t move.

Funny man!

Two hours later he was back, with some metal sheet and extra pairs of hands. He lowered the sheet, pushing it between me and the shard. Lots of wriggling, but we did it.

I was pulled to safety over the metal, which similarly stuck to the surface. Until we let go and it slipped down into the darkness.

Jjames checked me out, noticed cuts on my suit. And the gloves, where I had tried to grab edges. You’re lucky, a leak and you’d be gone. Let’s call it a day.

So there we are.

If I’d had rope I would have been lost.

The conflict?

What lay in the depths we did not know. The explorer in me wants to find out, the engineer wants to study the materials, the ecologist says admire but do not touch.

Pickett would make an announcement about the discovery tomorrow. I’m not sure what he will say.

Sitting around afterwards Jjames and I could only come to one conclusion.
Natural or artificial, it’s a giant bear trap.

Technique: #digital
Theme: #abstract
Highlight colour: #white #black

Series: #space #mini-sci-fi