We need answers, so I ask the Moon. There she is, her face dabbed in ashes, her eyes looking inwards at whatever it is that the Moon sees. I ask her why? and she clears the throat and tells me it’s all to do with synchronous rotation; that we face the future as if it was our own reflection, and that we face disaster as if it was a billboard advertising luxury getaways in the sun. It’s not the answer I needed, but then it wasn’t much of a question, and already the Moon is wiping her face from the sky. So, I ask her instead how it feels to be tidally locked to a dying planet. In the shadow, she opens her one remaining eye, and I see in its corner a drowned city, with blue-gowned people swimming in hospital corridors, with cars rising like bubbles in a bitter glass, with a baby in a basket floating between chimneys, and with an ark folded from plastic banknotes bearing all humanity’s diseases into a bold new future. It could be better, she says, it could be worse.
Oz Hardwick
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