Moon Blog is the story of an ambitious plan to create a commercial space programme and once again put men on the Moon. At present there is the X Prize, Virgin's low earth orbit trip and Russia's space trips available to the public. It is only a matter of time before there is commercial value in going to the Moon. Moon Blog is the story of a City worker who realises that reality TV broadcasting the selection, training and journey of astronauts to the Moon would be a worthwhile enterprise. After all, we went there nearly forty years ago. However, there are some that would go to any length to ensure it never happens.
Ignition. The Capsule gave one kidney-bursting jolt in reaction to the engines starting and almost immediately settled to a constant oscillation. The noise and vibrations were as loud as he expected for the actual blast off not just the ignition. He felt a wave of apprehension course through him as he waited with an intensifying feeling of dread. Four seconds. The noise and tremors combined to create an end of the world sensation before he detected the first upward motion. Immediately he was pressed down into his seat, an inch at least he felt, and the pressure all over his body was like being suffocated under a pillow that got heavier every second. He could only take shallow, short, rapid breaths that failed to satisfy his lungs’ demands for air. The roar in his ears was as loud as a thundercloud in his head that pealed relentlessly. The vibrations were not vibrations as he knew from either his earlier missions or expected them to be on this mission. The whole rocket was shuddering violently, pointing to seemingly random points on its axis; he couldn’t see properly because the shaking was so vigorous that he was unable to keep his eyes focussed on anything as it was all lurching sickeningly quickly – the window seemed to jump a foot in each direction every second. He really wasn’t sure if everything was all right, surely there was not supposed to be this much vibration. He couldn’t even tell which direction he was travelling as the acceleration was so strong that he could not focus his eyes on any of the instruments – he became so disorientated that he couldn’t even tell if it was day or night, land or sea from looking through the window. If something was going wrong there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. There was no third abort lever that he could pull, no line that he could traverse to safety; no bunker where he could hide and pray the danger would pass. After fifteen seconds the world began to come back into focus as the rate at which they were accelerating had decreased making it feel a little smoother. The instrument panel had stopped jumping now and he could check the dials and see that the flight was going perfectly; it was just that he was unprepared and he really had not expected the blast off to be so turbulent. Christ, he thought, if that’s how I felt, poor Scott must have shit himself.
The AL-EX Project (ALternative EXistence) is my first foray into light science fiction, written under the name of C M Donaldson (my real name) with a tale that tells of what happens when our main character aims to explore the dream state and manipula
