…Continued
Swami Vishpati stared for a while at the frozen lentils rotating in the microwave and chuckled. He knew most of the world still believed that we lived on a spinning globe, with a spinning moon somehow perfectly aligned to always face the same way towards the Earth.
His real name was Dr. Rajeev Gopanathan, an Indian national who immigrated to the USA in his late teens. While neither a devout nor practising Hindu, he knew enough to impress the top brass and represent the religion at Pandora Base. Having a PhD in Astrophysics from Princeton certainly helped, as well as spending five years travelling in India and studying under various gurus to pass himself of as “Swami Vishpati”.
His thoughts were interrupted by Michael Nuland, a brash Methodist (or so he said) Christian who always arrived at the mess hall with the same line - “A Christian, Hindu and Jew all walk into the mess hall…”. Of course, there was never a punchline. In fact, Rajeev thought they might be the butt of a cosmic joke should the Edge remain an unending mystery.
This time though Mike seem distempered, almost fearful. “It’s the Temps… I saw one today”, he said, almost matter-of-factly. Rubbing his wedding band, he proceeded to describe the beautiful Scandinavian-looking woman making toast at the early hours of the morning. This time she smiled at him, or so he claimed.
Rajeev interrupted him before the predictable “angels and demons” diatribe. “Look, we’ve been through this a thousand times. We’re in the middle of nowhere, cooped up in here, eating artificial crud, far away from our families or anything resembling civilisation, facing the greatest truth that humankind has ever discovered, and to top it all of, we can’t say a word of it to anyone, even though we’d be instant rockstars!”.
“Oh and if we step outside without the proper gear we’d instantly become a kind of dessert - chocolate-flavoured, in my case”.
Mike grumbled a little then proceeded to pour out powdered milk over some kind of cereal, almost proving Rajeev’s point.
“And don’t even think about fireworks this 4th of July”.
To be continued…