Karl arrived on the Moon eager for a fresh start. He would put aside the shyness that had kept him isolated in school, college, and even mission training; he could be the friendly, outgoing person he’d always wanted to be. It started well. His palms stayed dry and his voice steady at improv jams and open mic nights. He cracked jokes that even got a laugh out of the stoic Pyotr. His tone didn’t waver when he answered Miri’s question about the lemon yellow handmade sweater that he wore everywhere. His mother had made it for him. She had died while he was in training, swept away in the flood that destroyed his childhood home. His crewmates thought it odd to wear a sweater in the base’s T-shirt-and-shorts climate, but appreciated the garment’s sunny contrast with the inescapable basaltic gray.
When Mission Control stopped transmitting, communications tech Karl sprang into frantic action. He jury-rigged antennas, reprogrammed receivers, and wheedled technology. Leakage from geostationary satellites and broadcast stations painted a confused and terrifying portrait. Earth’s ordinary people were caught between nationalist states, corporate mercenary armies, and ‘freedom fighters’ whose goals consisted largely of limiting others’ freedom. The base inhabitants descended into endless disagreements. Whose homeland was more endangered: Xiyu or Pyotr’s? Who had the strongest claim to private transmission time: Miri or Gideon? With few terrestrial ties of his own, Karl tried to mediate the disputes. He succeeded only in making enemies of Xiyu and Gideon. When he tried to get a word in edgewise, he felt his own voice slipping away.
The last satellite signal disappeared and Karl’s expertise became redundant. He cheerfully volunteered to work in the farm module. Listening to the other farmers’ chatter, Karl would draw breath to join in and inevitably miss his chance. Eventually, his voice found its primary use in humming and singing to the plants. With stringent water rationing, laundry became a distant memory. The ubiquitous regolith embedded itself into the fibers of Karl’s sweater, darkening it to a dingy grellow.
The cause of the battery fire was never determined. Chemical breakdown, a short circuit from a regolith-abraded wire? Repeated charging to a hundred and twenty percent of design capacity likely didn’t help. Karl was the first to smell the smoke. He pulled the alarm, stripped off his sweater, and unraveled its hem. Tying the loose end to a stanchion, he shoved the sweater into Miri’s arms and told her to sprint to the main hab module. When the power failed, the corridor filled with smoke. Following the luminous lifeline of the yellow yarn, every farm crew member made it to safety.
Neither Karl nor his sweater survived unscathed. His lungs were damaged by smoke inhalation and Karl resigned himself to speaking even less. Several hundred meters of the sweater’s yarn were charred or melted along its length. He retrieved the salvageable yarn and unraveled the rest of the sweater. Karl croaked out a private request to the base machinist: could she make him a pair of hollow aluminum tubes, three millimeters in diameter, each with one pointed end? Of course she could. He thanked her with a smile brighter than the noontime lunar sun.
Recovery from the fire was protracted. The reduced food supply had the base’s inhabitants subsisting on the edge of starvation; illness was a constant companion. There was little joy or novelty in the tenuous lunar existence, until Karl surprised everyone by showing up to movie night with a slightly-lopsided yellow beanie. Wearing a rueful expression, he presented the hat to a thin and shivering Xiyu. She pulled it over her thinning hair and lifted him in a grateful, shaky hug.
Karl needed few words to provide knitting lessons to any crewmate who wanted to learn. His trainees occupied his needles and the remaining kilometer of yarn over many rounds of construction and unraveling, producing two additional hats, three pairs of socks, and a sleeveless vest. Their final project was a community effort, a lightweight lace blanket beloved by anyone in need of comfort. As the long and tedious selenic years wore on, Karl would wrap many a despairing colleague in the yellow fabric and sit silently at their side.
Alongside his agricultural and pastoral responsibilities, Karl performed weekly checks of the dormant communications system. No one expected to hear from the homeworld, but Karl refused to give up hope. The base’s inhabitants were shocked when he reported a strong signal from a ground station in the Arctic. Earth’s wars were done. A mission was planned to bring them home. Karl smiled at his colleagues’ joy. He repurposed the blanket into tiny keepsakes, one for everyone.
The rescue mission arrived, bringing the news that not all of the lunarites could be transported home in the first trip. Knowing that their weakened bodies reduced the chances of surviving launch and landing, Karl, Xiyu and a few others volunteered to stay behind. They would maintain the base until a new crew arrived, then become the first lunar retirees, with recognition and gratitude for their long service.
Karl died in his sleep just days before the relief crew touched down. His body was added to the organic material used to fertilize the farm where he had spent so many of his days. A memorial marker on the lunar surface contains his name, dates, and the words ‘he knit us together.’ A handmade teddy bear, yellow and grimy, rests with its back against the stone. Its arms are spread wide in an embrace.
About the author:
Pauline Barmby (she/her) is an astrophysicist who reads, writes, runs, knits, and believes that you can’t have too many favorite galaxies. She lives in London, Canada and hopes to someday visit her namesake main belt asteroid, minor planet 281067. Her fiction has appeared in OnSpec, Nature: Futures and Utopia Science Fiction and in multiple anthologies.
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