Hollow Moon

 Hollow Moon

S.G. Greene

            I once read a story about how, in 1970, Nasa deliberately crashed the ascent stage of Apollo 12 into the moon. They claim to have recorded our heavenly neighbor’s seismic activity in the hours proceeding the test and found that the entire body rang like a bell for hours. Many scientists argued that this meant the Moon was hollow. Empty. Devoid of the heart and soul so many of us have projected onto it for as long as we have had the capability of thought and imagination. This theory quickly devolved into hypothesis after hypothesis forged by internet sleuths, claiming that the moon was artificially planted in Earths orbit, or that it was somehow a great alien spaceship that has been dormant for millennia. Scientists were quick to get the bottom of this ringing and found that earthquakes on the moon act differently than they do on Earth—its strata are different from Earth’s in almost every way.

Years later, I find myself sitting on a dimly lit bus making its way north on 28^th street in Boulder. There’s a feeling in my gut that’s creeping up my torso, like an air bubble rising from the bottom of a pool. I’m hypnotized by the pestilential light that emits from my phone. The smell of old cigarettes mixed with sweat and fast food remains indifferent to my mind—it’s all white noise. My thumb is scrolling through Best Buy’s online website and that feeling keeps rising, as if to meet the moment as I remain absent from it. I had just taken out a My Rewards Best Buy card just days before and they allowed me access to the card before I received it in the mail. What should I put on it? I have a 2000-dollar limit at my disposal and that feeling is contorting itself through my diaphragm, up into my chest cavity where it works its way around my heart. Halo. I hadn’t played it since Reach came out in 2010, 13 years ago. My brother and I had always played together, and I held those memories close to my heart. But I have a PlayStation. Halo is on Xbox. Bingo. The amoeba that had been slipping through the core of my being finally squeezes through the top of my esophagus and rises into my head as I order the new Series X. Your order has been received. Ecstasy, for but a fleeting moment.

 I hear a crash deep within my mind as my thumb continues to swipe through my phone with a mind of its own. I feel a glaze wash over my eyes as I keep looking around Best Buy’s site for games and accessories. I picture the ascent stage of Apollo 12 hurtling toward the moon’s cratered surface as the mass of ambiguous emotion collides with the top of my skull. Bleach white ejecta mushrooms into black emptiness. I keep scrolling. Keep looking. Somewhere at the bottom of my mind is a convoluted contraption whose metal guts shake with hunger, and whose maw drools with oil and smoke. I search desperately for something else to go along with my new Xbox as the emotions reverberate through my bones. I tried to make out the shape of the contraption’s hungry mouth, but it is constantly phasing from one opening to the next. My desperate thumbs play an existential game of Tetris as I try to find the right shape to quell its hunger and fill the void. I try to fight back the feeling of reading that article as I slip further into desperate thought.

 I scroll and I scroll as my body rings like an empty bell.

I imagine myself washing up on a shore made of colorful glass. I’m pale white and my lips are blue. My eyes are wide open, shining with clear awareness. The pushing waves are not made of water but of amalgamated past—all things flowing at once in an amorphous mass that pushes me gently along to the edges of time. Down the shore, Jupiter sits on its axis, half buried in the shining sand, its storms rumbling quietly against the noise of a lifetime. At the other end, a man with long white hair and a short, trimmed beard sits with heavy eyes as he bounces a giggling toddler on his knee. The infant raises its hands in awe as one of the Galilean moons passes overhead, enveloping us in its shadow. I feel one leg still submerged in the fuzziness of the ocean that is gently pushing me from its fertile womb. Fire and sulfur I think to myself as the moon wades through the whiteness of this outer realm. Its surface is rigid with volcanoes like a budding teenagers face. It’s a hell unlike any other yet the curious child reaches for it, even as it spews plumes of lava far beyond its surface. My heart rate increases as I stare deeper into this thought. I look to the boy who is now much older—his father has slumped over, and his body turns into a flock of starlings who murmur into the space above us. The man walks toward dying body, and I see two familiar eyes staring into my own. My brother looks down upon me and reaches toward the heavens and casts aside a curtain, revealing an alcove where the soothing sound of a woodwind symphony washes over us. Lush green moss hangs down from a great tree whose limbs stretch out into the stars above. My brother reaches out and gently picks the fruit from the tree, where he presents it in his ethereal palm just out of my reach. A huge grin spreads across his face. I reach out…

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My eyes blink rapidly. They are dry and drained. I look around the bus. I don’t remember when I looked up from my phone last. I can feel the resonating emptiness subside. I had slipped away for a moment to somewhere that felt more real than the old seat I was fusing into. Best Buy’s app remains the only light on the now dark bus until I click the side button and slip my phone into my pocket. I reluctantly smile as the image of my brother giving me his teasing look flashes into my brain again: I know what you’re thinking. He usually did. I’m still ten minutes out from my apartment. Instead of impulsively pulling my phone out after a micro-break from mindlessly scouring the internet, I look out the window and search for the moon, regardless of the possibility that it might be an empty shell. For at least ten minutes, it could be whatever I needed it to be. Either way, at least it was there, shining bright for my tired eyes to see.