Regolith247

For DegenerateSendHelp Rachel Elliot was a superstar in every sense of the word. Platinum albums and broken sales records, accolades and awards of every sort, talk show interviews and product sponsorships and perfume lines. Her face was on dozens of billboards across the world including in Times Square and in Tokyo. She had concert ticket sales that earned her hundreds of millions of dollars per tour. Audiences loved her, and though critics constantly predicted her imminent loss of popularity - surely everyone would get tired of her in a few months, another year, another couple of years- Rachel always seemed to manage to write a song that boosted her back to the top of the charts, something that revived the connection that people felt to her. Even now she was getting a bit of last minute practice in as her private plane headed to her latest concert appearance. There was just one problem. She was also someone who lived a lie. It was for the best of intentions, for completely

Sand hissed against the sides of the crawler, a sound that made him think of static in a radio channel. He heard static almost as constantly, except the static didn’t ebb and flow sometimes, leaving him with moments of silence that made him wish for the wind. This place had few other sounds. He added a few. His breath. His heartbeat in his ears. The cough that had been with him since the crash. The rattle of metal. He wished for those noises when the wind stopped. They reminded him he still lived. The water reclaimer still worked. He watched it. Fixed it. He had enough food. Water he lacked. If the reclaimer failed, he would not have long. He waited. Static. Sand. Water trickled into his bottle. Water flowed down his throat. Time passed. His life was static and sand and hope. Hope that someone would notice his crawler. That someone would arrive. Surely someone would notice. Even on this world. Surely. It was day twenty. On night twenty came a storm. He sealed the vents, closed

Under a darkened sky we waited for the rain to stop, so that our journey could continue. Huddled under our meager little shelters, the rain streamed off of the ponchos and dribbled down around the edges, chilling skin and cooling the air. When morning came the sky was sullen, and the rain did not stop. But we could no longer wait. So we gathered our things, shivered our way into damp ponchos and ate meager meals of cold food, for we couldn’t start a fire, and the tiny little stoves we carried were out of fuel now. We walked on through mud and grime, the leaves overhead laden with moisture of their own and pouring little rainstorms down onto us every time we dared to remove our hoods. As the sunset neared though, the sky cleared. A slash of brilliant blue, above the branches. It had been a cold, miserable day. But tomorrow would be better. We were flying. After two nerve wracking minutes along the runway, we were flying. The plane creaked and popped around us. We’d barely made it- the

Valerie felt a bead of sweat starting to work its way down her forehead, the forced air inside her helmet failing to keep moisture from accumulating there. She reached up to wipe it away without thinking, only for her gloved hand to bounce off the faceplate of her helmet. Valeria shut her eyes tightly, feeling a momentary flash of claustrophobia. Funny- she hadn’t had one of those for a while. “Doing okay out there Val? We picked up a spike in your heart rate.” “Just fine Base Control.” she said, though her heart was pounding. “Give me a minute.” “You’ve been working on those power relays for two hours now- about time for a break.” “Copy that. Gonna finish this bolt.” She carefully gripped her impact driver- or her Lunar Surface Torque Applicator according to the manuals- and lined it up with the final stubborn bolt. The soil here was incredibly abrasive, and it played havoc with even the loose tolerance bolts that these systems had been designed with. She needed to make sure to avoid