Moon Bubbles

Out here, it was rare to see a ship.

Ma ain't told us much about the world beyond our little farm. Most of that we learned from books and old tapes. Darla and I would find them in bins in the attics, whatever old buildings no one had ever scraped clean. Old World tech, some of the newer books called it. But that's all we ever heard about the Old World.

Years ago, before Darla was old enough to remember much but when I was a youngling, we had a ship come in like the one before us now. Men in fancy white suits came out, lined in beehive patterns with bubbled heads. Little boxes sat on their wrists, and glowing television screens popped out and sat there in the air, waiting for something.

They walked through our homes, talking into their wristboxes. It wasn't English. They talked to Ma, and asked about us, gave us bags of seeds and clothes. The seeds never grew, and after Darla kept refusing to wear 'those silly swimsuits' the clothing kept gathering dust in the attic. They gave us boxes of New World tech too, but the manuals weren't in English so we never figured it out. This was the Old World, after all. Too old for the new.

That was years ago - all that tech was still sitting dusty in the attic. We'd taken it out and pushed buttons once or twice, but after Darla lost her little finger playing with that knife gizmo, Ma forbid us from touching any of them again. Darla wasn't needing much more persuasion than that. Bubbleheads hadn't come around again for a long time, and good riddance, or so we thought.

The same beehived bubbleheads started pouring out of that ship just now, walking all over our good dirt. Darla always laughed when I called them bubbleheads, but she laughed at most anything I said. Look at them, walking around all confused and looking into their wristboxes and around at the sky. They looked all dumb-like at the world around them. The Old World. That's our world, not yours. Great golden fields of wheat, trees, the little point of a sun setting around Uranus. They were like confused little bees, buzzing around looking for flowers. Darla giggled when I said that.

We called it the Old World, but we learned that from books. Ma called it home, and nothing else. We weren't sure what Pa would have called it were he still around, the two of us were too young then and Ma never liked talking about it. They called it Cressida. I still have the paper from the first time they came, when the bubblehead sat at our table and answered any questions we had about the universe we were stuck in. Cressida's an old moon, he said and I wrote. How do you spell Cressida? He pushed a thumb to his bubble and thought real hard, then wrote it twice. Once in his speak, and once in ours. Why are you here? An ancient preserved mining facility from far expeditions. Life support systems never went offline, and stragglers kept a prospering agriculture in the dwindling terrasphere. I wrote all that down hoping one of our old dictionaries could figure it out, but all I learned was I needed to listen to Ma's vocabulary lessons more. Tools only as good as the head using it, Ma'd say.

Ma stared off at the landing ship with her arms crossed, watching all the bubbleheads get out and walk around. Air ain't never good enough for 'em, she'd say. Darla said maybe they were all just really ugly and afraid to show their faces. Maybe you should get a bubble of your own, then, I told her. I got a slap for that. Even without her little finger she still slapped something fierce.

The place they came from sounded a lot odder than Cressida. They didn't even have a name for it in English, but their word for it sounded like the noise a big rock makes when you throw it into a river. Their home was big, spacious, and there wasn't any dirt or rivers or trees. That's what one of the bubbleheads told us, years ago. He came in while the others ran around talking into their wristboxes, he wanted to talk to us. Pulled a chair out and sat pretty at our table. What's your name? None of us understood it. What's your home like? He looked at the ceiling when he talked, looked all around, like there weren't a ceiling or a floor or a sky or nothing - and he was back home in an even bigger bubble where all the lights in the sky were stars.

Giant hallways, he'd tell us. So big you could fit hundreds of those ships across them, big open sky roads that stretched on forever. Platforms strutted out of all the sides, homes and shops and everything you could ever want. Everything was made out of special metal. How do you farm, if there's no dirt? We make our own food, with these - and he pushed a button on his wristbox. A little brown cookie popped out, and he halved it for me and Darla. It tasted like dirt. I guess that's what they did with the dirt.

I ran off and grabbed one of Ma's good sugar cookies from the jar. This is a real cookie, not your dirtcake thing. Try it. He backed off a little. No, that's Old World food. Well, he didn't say that exactly, but he went off about bacteria and proteins and how his body wasn't adapted. Old World food. New World dirtcakes. Darla and I always spent time wondering what the New World was, turns out it's dirtcakes, hallways and bubbleheads. He split another one of his dirtcakes with Ma but she set it on the table and never touched it, kept her arms crossed the whole time we listened to him.

The ship that landed today looked a lot like the one he had come in back then. It had a great smooth top, polished like a pebble. The edges broke off into square feet that sat all around the thing, poking square holes in our good fields. A ramp fell down from the back, and bubbleheads wheeled out crate after crate of who knows what.

Darla, don't go fiddling in those crates, we don't know what half that stuff does yet. Darla was too young to listen. Her eyes burst open as she glossed all over the shiny gadgets. Pulled out a little round device with slots all over it and noticed the trigger on the handle. Darla, that's dangerous, don't you - too late. Ma kept that finger frozen just in case. Darla never much liked talking about it, or even much about the bubbleheads anymore.

There were a lot more crates than last time. I waved and hollered down at them, bubbleheads going about their business. A few waved back. Ma, look! A couple of them are little! And headed our way.

Hi, I'm Jackson, welcome to the Old World. Bubbled laughter. They didn't understand. Ma and Darla stood behind me, with both their arms crossed. A bigger bubblehead came up behind the little ones, and held their shoulders, telling them something in their bubblespeak. Funny how even under a bubble, you remember someone you met years ago just by the sound of their voice. I yanked Darla's reluctant hand and held out her stump of a little finger. What do bubbleheads do to fix this?

Bubbleheads? He asked. He felt his helmet, then started laughing.

This is the Old World. Cressida. We didn't always have dirtcakes or wristboxes or bubbles. But now we do. We have neighbors now, and little bubbleheads to play with. Darla got her finger back, and we're starting to learn a little about most of what this New World tech is good for. Ma's even starting to learn some of their language, but she still gets that stern look on her face whenever a new gizmo finds its way into her kitchen.

After a while they started building their own bubblehouses. They let us in, so long as we wore our own bubbles. Can't let the air mix. Too old for the new, or too new for the old, I lost track. I got accustomed to it though. Bubbles ain't so bad. They said one day we can all visit their great hallways and meet more bubbleheads, because lots of people are interested in Cressida. Darla was nervous about it, and Ma said not a chance in hell, but I think it'll happen. People change their minds all the time. These days, it's pretty normal to see a ship.