Rocket Lake

So at last we’re here. Rocket Lake. It was a lot more than the day’s walk I thought it was, back at the beginning. In fact it’s right on the other side of the crater, most of the way up the escarpment, which is good because we have to make it to Lady Luna at the top by sunset, and that’s at about breakfast time.

They have been celebrating the first human contact with the Moon at this lake for at least 50 millennia, and before that they were doing it somewhere else, for almost all of history: every year on 21st July they launch a rocket of some sort, and at Rocket Lake some of them are made into accommodation units afterwards. We have the one you see above, comfortably adapted with a little kitchen and outside platform.

After breakfast we took a couple of little boats and spent most of the day rowing around from one capsule to another between the creamy white cliffs, stopping to picnic under the trees.

We swapped around a few times between boats. I expected the others to ask me again about who I wanted to look after me, but no-one did.

Of course I kept thinking about the butterfly icon. I didn’t tell anyone about it, but I did ask Carys whether he thought artists were on the whole good people. ‘Some good, some less good,’ he said. ‘And with the way people’s identity and consciousness is now, quite often both.’

And now I’m sitting here, on the small metal platform of the old rocket. The sun has so nearly set that the lake is in the shadow of the low cliffs, and there’s mist rising off the water. Inside, Ava is cooking, wearing a long purple and yellow silk gown. There’s some music playing on the shore, a whole band of copper and brass robots. Carys told me it’s something called Robojazz, a style from the late 2nd century. A small audience, mostly anthromonkeys, dance and cheer.

The little boats we used today are still tied up alongside, ready for the early morning start. If I get down into one of them, with all that noise, no-one inside will be able to see me or hear me.

I want to talk to butterflies.