Man on the Moon

“Captain crash and the beauty queen from mars?” compared General Specific looking over the tattered newspaper into Quentin’s screen. It was a picture of The Eagle, the Apollo 11 lunar module and an artist’s imagination of the first manned mission to Mars.

“It’s been forty years since Neil Armstrong took the small step!” proclaimed Quentin in celebration, still facing the screen. “What a contest it was! Sputnik, Luna, Vostok, Voshkod, Soyuz, you name it! The Soviets won all the battles but the Yanks finally won the war! Yeah baby!” The others looked at Quentin’s back waiting for someone else to say something dumb after which Quentin could launch into his explanation.

"It's all geek to me." sighed Captain Specific.

“I think he’s talking about Ladies Wimbledon.” suggested Great Scot keeping his volume down.

"It's almost forty years since Woodstock. Led Zep I?" suggested Major Minor.

Suddenly the bus was abuzz. Everyone found Major Minor's thinking pattern more attractive and possibilities flew around like one of those dratted snitches. The air was thick with thoughts and clarity was going down. Vietnam? Give Peace a Chance? Monty Python? Sesame Street? Boeing 747's debut? Charles de Gaulle stepping down? Unix?

“No, the moon landing.” corrected Page Boy who couldn't take it anymore after someone suggested the first ATM. “And it was ‘a small step’, Neo! Armstrong didn’t realise that no one on Earth heard the ‘a’.” he corrected aloud. Despite all the time that had passed he still called Quentin by his online name. Everyone knew how they’d both met each other online and how there had been some misunderstandings. No one knew the exact nature of the problem though. When the pair discovered the truth it led to Quentin becoming a little weird about his online relationships about which no one knew anyway while Page Boy, on the other hand, immersed himself in his books and publicly aired his disapproval of the internet. There weren’t many things which did provoke him and it was a welcome sight to see he was human too.

Quentin held up a finger on his left hand as his right punched away at his numpad and then reached over for the ‘a’ and the ‘f’ before getting to the ‘k’ as he swiveled around in his chair taking off his headphones. It was an impressive performance and would have put a Hindu god to shame.

“Well,” he began, clearing his throat, “On the 4th of October 1957 the USSR launched Sputnik 1 beating the USA who joined later with the Explorer 1.”

The next few minutes were spent in a rapid run-through of the race to the moon. Names whizzed by like a Monday does not. “The first animal in space - Laika in the Sputnik 2, ’57.... first impact on the moon with Luna 2, ’59... Luna 3 picturing the dark side, ’59... Sputnik 5 bringing back Belka and Strelka in ’60... the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, in the Vostok 1, ’61...”

“Kennedy declares that the Americans will reach the moon in a decade.” interrupted Page Boy.

“...the first spacewalk by..."

“Khrushchev backs off a bit.” interrupted Page Boy again.

"...Alexei Leonov in Voshkod 2, ’65...”

“Johnson continues what Kennedy started.” interrupted Page Boy again, irritated.

“...Luna 9 makes the first soft landing, ’66... AND the first men on the moon, ladies and gentlemen, Apollo 11, 21st July 1969!” announced Quentin. Page Boy returned to his window spot and became the learned statue that he generally was. Great Scot fiddled around with the brochure he’d been reading seriously the past couple of weeks. Baby Bitch looked on, eyebrow raised. Some nodded, half expecting a band to strike it and teary-eyed astronauts to materialise to receive the trophy from Platinum Blonde as they thanked everyone profusely. Others did not. That didn’t stop Quentin from going into how Mars was being planned and Vikings and pathfinders and phoenixes and what NASA was planning for humans and antimatter and polyethylene and the risk to astronauts and...

General Specific was still listening when his eyes caught sight of Quentin’s screensaver behind him and lost track of the man himself for a second. It looked cool, the sort of thing you could do with Flash or something, probably a trivial 15 minute affair for Quentin. This one sported a black background as an ideal screensaver should and had two hovering faces. One was easily recognisable and the other wasn’t hard to guess. The caption read, “He moonwalked. He moonwalked.”

(Image is property of Times Warner, I think. )