The Terminator
Sophie peered through the telescope at the Terminator, the
delineating boundary separating darkness and light on the surface of the
moon. She looked specifically at
the newly discovered crater that she would request be named ‘JaLoftus’ in Jamie’s
honour. The slither of impenetrable blackness against the mottled black of the
surrounding rocks had since been observed by only a handful of people with the
most powerful of specialist telescopes. Yet Sophie had made the discovery using
a fairly modest 30 year old reflecting telescope, enhanced with a new neutral
density filter and Sophie’s almost supernatural ability to spot miniscule
differences in contrast. Her photographic memory ensured that she was always
alert to any new shapes or contrasts in the moon’s surface.
Sophie
knew that her discovery, with the associated connotations regarding the rate of
rotation of the moon, would be enough to transform Jamie’s doctoral thesis from
a standard pass to a ground-breaking document that would win him the respect of
his peers and probably the reputation as a leading selenographer. And if his
reputation led to a position of importance somewhere else in the world she
would go with him gladly.
‘Hey,
Sophie. Who’s that postcard from on your desk?’ Stevie, Sophie’s assistant in
the astronomy lab, yanked off his ipod and flung it onto his cluttered
workstation along with his tatty rucksack and leather bikers’ jacket.
‘Hi
Stevie. I dunno. Tim from downstairs brought it up earlier; I’ll read it later.
Look, check this out …’ Sophie removed her eye from the lens and gestured for
Stevie to take a look. ‘It’s moved again. The Terminator. Galileo suggested
this could happen four hundred years ago, but nobody listened. When those twits
at NASA read Jamie’s thesis they’ll be eating their words …’
Stevie
gazed at Sophie with his head tilted to the left. Letting his breath go he
moved across to the telescope and looked through the eyepiece, right eye squinted
tightly closed. He held the telescope with the lightest of touches, wary of
making the tiniest adjustment to the highly calibrated piece of equipment.
‘Sophie
what the hell am I looking at? It’s the same as yesterday, as last week …’
‘No,
dummy, look! The left edge of the crater, towards the top. Can you see a section
slightly higher than the rest? That’s a new feature. Or new to us, anyway. It
isn’t catalogued; you can check. That means that the light coming from the
Earth is hitting the moon at new angles, which means …’
‘Yeah,
yeah, Soph. I know what it means. I just don’t see it.’
Sophie
was exasperated that Stevie and her other colleagues , who spent as much time
as she did staring at the moon, always struggled to make out the features she
could detect so easily. They had enough respect for her work and her reputation
not to doubt her, but in this instance Stevie was obviously struggling to
combat his incredulity. After all, she would doubt the veracity of this
astonishing find if she couldn’t see it so clearly with her own eyes. She
adjusted the hair band that kept her thick auburn hair from falling into her
eyes and puffed out her cheeks.
The
only person with whom she could really share the almost erotic excitement of
each tiny advance in understanding the moon was Jamie. He loved to be near her
at the facility; since he had appeared as a volunteer from Manchester
University eight months ago they had spent almost every evening together,
beneath the moon. At times when the moon was waning they would study the newest
photographs from the Southern Hemisphere and discuss possible angles for
Jamie’s thesis. She was looking forward to seeing him again after his well-earned
rest; he was like the waxing to her waning and he made her feel whole. Her
friends would laugh, but they had never experienced the romance of gazing
together at that distant rock, breathing in each other’s air. His hand finding
her back, creating craters in her skin at that serene moment was about as
erotic an experience as you could have. Almost matched by the frenzied fucking
on all fours that usually followed on that rough industrial carpet after the
others had left for home.
The
bonus of working as an astronomer was that most of her work was done at night.
So Jamie had fallen for her under the gentle moonlight, away from the mundane
details of daylight living. They were akin to vampires or werewolves, adoring
each other during the dark hours, their coupledom restricted to the unreal
existence they led. The time would come for them to move forwards into the
light, but for now she was happy. Ecstatic.
Stevie
pointed to Sophie’s moon-rock pendant. ‘So when will you be getting this
diamond, then? And the big proposal …?’
‘It
might not be a diamond,’ Sophie giggled. ‘I said he’d promised a sparkling rock
next time. You drew your own conclusions.’
‘Where
is he anyway?’
‘He’s
gone to see his parents. They wanted to celebrate him completing his thesis.’
‘The
one that you mainly wrote, you mean?’
Sophie
turned to look sharply at Stevie, but he met her gaze with a smirk. She looked
away and insisted ‘Stevie you know that’s not it. I just helped. So would you,
if your special someone needed it.’
Stevie
scratched his round belly through his ‘Iron Maiden Somewhere on tour ‘86’
T-shirt.
‘If
Megan Fox asked me to discover a new lunar crater, give her credit for its
discovery then write her doctoral thesis in return for a few midnight shags and
a moon-rock necklace then I’d oblige her, sure.’
A
pink hue spread across Sophie’s cheeks, but her rebuttal stuck in her throat as
she caught sight of his cheeky grin.
‘Come
on, Sophie. It’s getting cloudy. Let’s go to the pub. First round’s on me.’
The
two friends picked up their coats. In their hurry they forgot all about the
postcard on Sophie’s desk. On one side was a panorama of a beach, wooden huts
dipping their stilts into the perfect turquoise sea. The message on the reverse
read:
Dear
Sophie, thanks for all the fun and your help with my studies. You really are a
special girl. I’ve got an interview for an associate lecture post at Cambridge,
leading to a tenured Professor post, if I’m lucky. And next month I’ve been
asked to do a TV interview (on ScienceWatch!!!) to talk about the moving
Terminator. And you made it all possible. Take care of yourself and see you
around, maybe. All our love, Jamie, Kate (and bump!) x
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