Three men surfed through space inside of a giant, titanium golf tee. Not so much like those longer ones proliferated these days, more like a good-ole-fashioned ‘regular’ tee. The tee also had a few wings and some added minor details, such as rocket propulsion, landing gear, and a rover to explore the surface of extraterrestrial terrestrials.

NASA was very proud of the golf tee. The last few decades had been tough, so the three men inside felt a real sense of pride to be surfing through space in it. Their destination was our cosmic companion, Bella Luna, and they would be conducting unprecedented tests upon her. They would be using a new machine, the Resource Prospector (affectionately the ‘ResPro 3000’), which had the capability to take in lunar resources and turn them into human ones. If all went well, Bella might become a source of breathable oxygen and drinkable water, and potential resources from the satellite’s soil. NASA hoped this would make them again a source for American pride, and nothing could be more important than that. Pride drives funding, they knew.

The three surfers spoke little to each other. Great anticipation sent their imaginations somersaulting in a frenzied flurry of dreams. When the one of the men spoke, it happened without r’s or g’s, and some words unavailable in a Webster’s. The second man kept r’s and g’s in tact, but occasionally substituted b’s for v’s, and d’s for r’s, but only occasionally. The third was a speaker of all 26 letters as they’d been explained to him, and his mind felt comfortable translating the other’s words in real time. In this order, they were Mike, Luke, and Cam. Reclining in their TempurPedic chairs, they swiveled with gentle, zero-gravity pushes while reaching for an occasional knob twist or button toggle. The shuttle was smallish, but they did not feel cramped. They were good friends, and could cite things about each other that few others could.

Disjointed from NASA’s pride, the visit to Bella was met with rolled eyes and people adjusting their chairs, maybe even standing up out of them. 1) She was boring. 2) We’d been there how many times already? 3) What were we hoping to learn that we didn’t already know, or couldn’t find out from a safe and sublunar location? With tight budgets and ‘bigger issues’ on everyone’s hands, nobody was thrilled about a multi-billion dollar mission that could result in nothing new. As far as the ResPro 3000 was concerned, it was a shiny new toy that had never been played with. 1) What if it broke once they got there? 2) What if it takes decades, or longer, to refine the resources we hoped could be attained? 3) HOW much did it cost??? NASA wasn’t a stranger to naysaying, but knew this might be the proverbial ‘last straw’ if they came up dry. Major famines were sweeping across much of the globe, due to unprecedented meteorological disasters in recent years. Funds would be reallocated, and NASA would cease to exist.

In a stout office park in Florida, near many golf courses, a room was inverse to the golf tee. It was large, and full of many people who weren’t necessary great friends with each other. There was a lot of talking: some outward thoughts, some firm commands, and many questions (more than a few were rhetorical). The people toggled buttons and twisted knobs, and typed words with keyboards and clicked trackpads, a lot. It resembled a college classroom, amphitheater-like, except that the person in charge was up in the small end. She looked out at the larger end where two screens dominated the surface area of the wall. On the left was a video feed of the inside of the surfing golf tee; on the right, a 3-dimensional rendering of it’s flight path from Mama Terra to Bella Luna.

She stepped up to the desk in front of her, put fingers in her mouth, and whistled in a looping style which halted all of the outward thoughts, commands, and questions (of which, more than a few had been rhetorical). She spoke in a strong, city-bred mezzo. Her skin was dark and her eyes moved about the faces as she spoke.

“Ladies and Gentlemen. In less than 24 hours, our boys will be attempting to change how we see the moon forever. They and the Resource Prospector are not just a leap in scientific endeavor, but in the race against time. We, as a species, will not go on forever unless we do something about it. Our orbiting friend could sustain us for centuries, if not millennia, with pure water, breathable oxygen, and much, much more. Keep your eyes and hands ready, people.” She twirled a finger in the air and spun everyone around in their chairs back to their screens. She spoke again.

“Capitain Hamil? This is Houston, do you read me?”

A disembodied, Bostonian replied, in patchy, static-spangled words: “Loud and clear, Houston.”

“Excellent,” She said. “What’s your status?”

“It’s pacific, Houston. We’ll begin our approach in approximately 10 hours.”

“Good. Take your time; this is just the overture. How’s ResPro been responding to tests?”

“Very well. I don’t mean to get cheesy, this little guy could make real a difference.”

“Well, we’ll make sure to note your optimism, Captain. Get some rest. Big day tomorrow.”

“With pleasure, over ‘n’ out,” he said, followed by a click.

The woman in charge sat down in a chair like the rest of the room, but did not toggle buttons or twist knobs. She focused on the typing of words with her keyboard and clicking her trackpad, which spread word to every electronic ear that the mission was going well. She knew this was NASA’s last hope. Her job was on the line, the one that let her daughter study the violin, and kept the fridge full. She looked up at the fight-path screen, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply.

 

The space surfers spoke even less now, really not at all, as they readied for the approach and the mission to begin. As the golf tee rested gently on the lunar soil like a dropped toy to the bottom of a swimming pool, the trio of astronauts confirmed it with Houston to a resounding clash of applause. Without pausing to bask in the glory, they quickly left their TempurPedic seats and lowered two things to the ground, from a hatch in the floor: a dune buggy and a big copier on wheels. The dune buggy was a forty million dollar golf cart with incredible suspension and big, round tires. The copier was the four billion dollar Resource Prospector, the ResPro 9000 (adjusted, as 3000 wasn’t nearly cool enough), who’s inner workings included cooling/condensing modules, heating/oven modules, and everything in between. The surfers became riders, and rode off with their expensive copier to the dark side of the moon.

Riding along Bella’s bumpy surface was a strange experience, even for three experienced riders. Looking directly up, they saw Earth. It’s blue reflected just enough sunlight to put the moon in a ‘cool’ filter of color. Other than that, black cosmos spread out immeasurably, silently expanding. It was not wise to keep looking up though, as slipping into one of Bella’s many canyons meant a drop of multiple thousands of feet. Even with less gravity, the riders would be hurt at best, and the copier would be capable of creating nothing.

They stopped to conduct their first test. This was the easy test, one were they would deposit moon dirt into the copier, and it was to analyze its contents and minerals for useful parts, that would then be broken down. The dirt was universally known in the science community to contain the ingredients to do this, and it shouldn’t take more than a minute. Luke and Cam dismounted from the buggy (Mike stayed at the wheel) and Cam pressed a button on the copier to open a slot. Using a small titanium shovel, Luke deposited about a gallon of the space soil as Cam watched to confirm when it was full.

Offering a thumbs-up, the universal sign of approval, Luke stopped and Cam pressed the button again, closing the slot. He opened a panel cover on its side to select some options, then pressed a final time to get ResPro started. If air was present at the moment, some whirring might have greeted their ears, but instead they were just greeted with some flashing lights and a visible rumbling of its inner activities. They waited about 6 minutes. A solid red light appeared, and Luke and Cam rushed over to view the screen.

It said: “NO RESOURCES FOUND.”

The two spacemen looked at each other in disbelief, and then looked down as the machine spit out the moon dirt onto their moon boots like a sick pup. Luke pressed a button on his chest and spoke to Cam, suit to suit.

“That didn’t just happen,” he said. Cam had taken a step back.

“Did that just fail??” patched in Mike, from the buggy.

“It did. I don’t believe it, but it did.” Cam turned toward Mike. “This test couldn’t fail. What are we supposed to do now?”

Silence filled the silence.

“…Should we just…try it again?” Cam said. The other two shrugged, and they did. Again the pup spat dirt on their boots.

“I don’t know about you two, but I’ve always felt the ice mining was a way more promising angle. Let’s get across the terminator and give it a shot.” Mike waved his arm in a sweeping ‘come on over’ motion to his two friends on foot. He sounded cheerful and optimistic. Luke’s psyche didn’t agree.

“Give it a SHOT?” Luke replied. “This isn’t cooking class, Mike! This is the damn moon. The soil test was the one test that could not fail, and you’re asking us to drive another 2 hours, into a place we’ve never been before, in the HOPE that it turns out fine?”

A bit more silence, though the tension could be felt in the back of their throats.

“I wasn’t asking, Lieutenant.” Mike looked Luke in the eye through polycarbonate visors. “Get in.”

Cam knew enough to not cross his superior, even off planet, and promptly returned to his seat. Luke burned with frustration and hopelessness, and stepped back to the buggy after a few more seconds of stewing.

“We’re going to make this work, Luke. We’re gonna be big, damn heroes, just you wait.” Mike patted Luke’s padded shoulder. Luke crossed his arms in disgust as they drove off.

Rumbling across the tundra, it was sunny and bright when Mike slammed on the breaks, thinking he’d gone blind. In fact they’d just hit the terminator which separated Bella’s light and dark sides, and light was no more. Turning back to look at the light, the three imagined they’d fallen out of existence, as if down a well, and reality shined back down at them in stark comparison. They were officially the first three humans to reach the dark side of the moon. Mike turned on headlamps and they rumbled on.

It would still be an hour or so until they reached their destination: the slope of a canyon where evidence of hydrogen rich soil could be a very real sign of synthesizing liquid water.  Cam thought about his cat at home, and how many years his mom might still be around. Luke sulked regretfully for losing his calm, and committed to following orders. Mike kept his mind clear, but grew concerned, as it seemed they might have a flat.

Mike looked at the wheels. They were coated with something.

“Guys,” Mike said, pressing the button on his chest. “I’m going to check out what’s gummed up the axles. Sit tight.”

“Roger.”

“Roger.”

Mike hopped out of the driver’s seat with a firm push down, letting him lazily vault up over the side rail and float down to the ground, into the dark. He looked a bit like an action scene detective, sliding across his hood, but in slow mo.

His feet hit the ground, and that’s when he felt it. The ground was squishy and gummy…almost like some kind of extraterrestrial Play-Doh.

“The hell is this…?” He said to himself. Pounding his chest button, “Cam, do we have the micro spectrometer with us?”

“We do!” Cam leaned over the side and handed a television remote with an LCD screen to Mike. With two prongs that stuck out of the front, he pierced the porous pulp on which he stood and watched for the screen to provide him some answers. It glowed with a bluish hue. He got them, and fell softly backwards to a sitting position.

“What? What is it?” Luke asked.

“I…I don’t think this thing’s working properly…” Mike held the spectrometer away from him like it had grown claws.

“What does it say??” Cam and Luke’s emotions shuffled like a slotting machine, and only Mike had the power to stop the spinning. “Is it hazardous?” Cam asked.

“If this is accurate…it’s cheese.”

 

Mike wondered if there was a lack of oxygen to his suit, and he had lost his mind. Cam and Luke shared this concern.

“Hey there, Mike? Why don’t you hand that thing back over here, yeah?” Luke goaded him like a scared child, which was pretty accurate at the moment. “We’ll just take a look too, just to make sure, if that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah..sure…” Mike felt drunk. He handed it to them and search his suit for leaks; checked all his sensors and settings. Nothing seemed awry.

“Luke, he’s not kidding. The ground is a 5% lactose solution, with the proper levels of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur to create…solid cheese.” Cam was doing his best to not laugh as he said it, not because it was funny, but as it might be the first time since college that he’d recited cheese’s chemical makeup.

Mike wiped some cheese off of his legs and hopped back in the rover, getting a bit on the seat. The three sat without speaking to each other for what seemed like hours, but was probably about a minute and 34 seconds.

“So…do you think it’s edible? You know, by like…people?” Luke asked. The words burst out without lead-up or warning, breaking their trances a bit. His brain felt like tapioca.

“Theoretically, yes. Space is the perfect vacuum sealer bag. This cheese could stay fresh forever. I wonder how old it is…” Cam replied.

“Boys!” Luke stood up in his seat. “We’ve done it!”

“Done what?” Mike said.

“We’ve solved the hunger crisis!”

The three highly decorated Air Force officers felt a caffeinated mix of fear and joy. Mike’s wore off quickly, and he slowly swung his fist down to hit the roll-bar next to him, attempting to slam it in anger. “No, we didn’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘No, we didn’t’?? Mike. There’s megatons of food here! Sure, it’s not the greatest thing in terms of vitamin intake, but it’s got real carbs and calcium, and we can synthesize the rest. How can you not see it yourself?”

“Just stop it. Can you imagine what HQ’s reaction would be to this?”

“Well, positive I’d think!” Luke was on the verge of tears. Cam was less excited; he’d already arrived at the point Mike was about to make.

“Yes, but what about the REST of the world? What about the DoD? We’re just going to tell them that the answer to world hunger is to bring down the moon, because the dark side is made of cheese? You’ll find yourself in a happy house before Christmas, along with the rest of the agency.”

“Mike, man, we’ve got spectrographic readings! We could even bring back a sample so it’s undeniable!”

“Everything’s deniable to those who re-write the truth every day and you know that,” Mike’s heart rate was high. “Even if they believed it, the money and time it would take to bring it back could never be justified. It’s hard enough shipping 3 guys in a steel Pringles tube to the moon and back; can you even fathom how much this stuff weighs?”

Luke stopped responding, though his eyes continued to plead. Mike continued, subduing his anger as he did.

“No matter what we do, this won’t work. I’m just as blown away as you two, but it doesn’t change the consequences of bringing this to light. We’ve got to figure something out…some way we can angle this…”

“What if we just say that it’s not cheese?” Cam chimed in.

“What do you mean?”

“We tell everyone that it’s a fascinating new compound, and we’ve got to bring it back for tests. Even though the composition will be of cheese when it’s examined, we’ll deny it as ludicrous!” Cam was getting more animated than an introvert typically does, and Luke couldn’t help but smile.

“I mean…it’s not exactly some heinous lie…I’m fine with that if you are.”

The three gathered a basketball-sized lump of luna queso and brought it back into the buggy. Wiping globs of it off of the wheels, the three managed to turn their ride around and get it moving back to the light. Their hearts and minds struggled to sum up what had just occurred, but there was no doubting the massive cheese ball sitting next to Cam in the back seat.

Muted yelps released from their mouths as they crossed back over the terminator. The blinding sunlight was shockingly difficult to adjust to, and for a good 30 seconds they were wholly blanketed with rays like hundreds of arrows. As Cam’s sight surfaced again, he looked over to their ball and hammered down his communicator button. “Stop!”

Mike slammed on the breaks and turned to see; Luke followed suit. On the seat, next to Cam who was paralyzed in a mix of fear and sorrow, was a pile of dust.

“What happened?? Does it react to sunlight?” Mike shouted as he grabbed the spectrometer and stuck it into the pile. Wisps of moon dust floated away as he waited for the screen to load his result. He looked.

“No…”

“What??”

“It’s totally changed. It’s back to dirt.”

Silence for a few seconds, then all three hit their buttons again.

“How is that possible? / How can that happen? / Are you sure?” They said simultaneously.

Cam sifted through the pile, hoping some morsel was left at the bottom, but simply spread a cloud of dust throughout the nothing. Mike wafted it out of his view.

“It’s gone. Can something only exist in the darkness, and not in the light?” Mike asked. “I’ve never heard of it, but Cam is it possible?”

“Without a barrier like Earth has, solar rays can theoretically bring chemical properties with them. It is certainly possible that when the cheese came into contact with sunlight, it would change into something else entirely. It appears that the MicroSpec found everything that was there before, but in altered PPMs. The sun has reconfigured the elements.”

“Well, we already know this stuff can’t get us the resources we need.” Mike picked up handful as he said this, letting it fall through and swim around his spread, gloved fingers. “What if we took it out of the sun?”

“Hard to say what good it would do, but it’s worth a shot!” Cam refused to be sad again. It wasn’t as fun as hope.

“You think all those moon rocks people have brought home turn to cheese at night?” The three laughed and felt hopeful, and returned to their giant, titanium golf tee.

Before leaving, the ResPro 9000 managed to convert a limited amount of dust and into breathable oxygen, and produced 1.5 oz of potable drinking water. The results were just enough to label the mission a success, although the time and energy required to produce them were great, and the crew and Houston agreed that they would need a few more years of development before truly turning around some tangible results.

They called the boys home, and flew them proudly back to Earth in their golf tee again. Their TempurPedic seats were soft and supportive.

 

A large container of moon dust came back with them, but it did not turn to cheese. Although it wrenched their hearts like wash cloths to keep quiet of the truth, none of the space riders could divulge what their television remote had told them on the dark side of the moon.

NASA defended the mission as a critical step forward, for although no resources could be mined at this time, knowing some limits was just as important as attempting to push beyond others. Funding didn’t stop, and the world kept on turning, and three men forever wondered a question more intriguing perhaps than any other in all record of human memory:

 

Exactly what kind of cheese was it?