Low Gravity Arguments
A short story derived from a sci-fi book I am writing
Lucos was upside down, which was not how the checklist said you were supposed to change a pressure valve. The checklist had very firm opinions about this. The checklist writer had also never lived on the Moon.
He hung there with his boots hooked into the handrail, neck craned at an angle that would have made his old physical therapist wince. A bead of hydraulic fluid bulged at the edge of the coupling. It trembled, not leaking, exactly. Thinking about it.
Outside the viewport, Earth drifted past, blue and distant. It always looked calm from here, which annoyed him more than it should have.
“Rex,” Lucos said, tightening the valve. Then tightening it again, just a smidge. “If this thing blows, I’m blaming you.”
“That attribution would be incorrect,” Rex said from the hatch. “You chose to ignore standard orientation procedure.”
Lucos exhaled through his nose. “Standard orientation assumes your joints still cooperate.”
The bead wobbled, threatening to drip. Lucos waited. Counted without meaning to. Nothing happened in five minutes. No hiss. No drops. He wiped the coupling clean, then unhooked his boots and twisted upright, slower than he used to.
“Log it as done,” he said.
Rex’s green eye brightened. “Maintenance complete. Task duration exceeded projection by four minutes.”
“Yeah,” Lucos said. “I got distracted.”
“There were no anomalies requiring—”
“I know.” Lucos pushed off the wall and drifted past Rex, bumping his shoulder. Not hard, but on purpose. “I was looking outside.”
“There is no operational value in observing Earth.”
Lucos snorted. “I knew you’d say that, you bucket of bolts.”
Rex followed him down the corridor, steps soft and perfectly even. That, too, was annoying.
“You don’t miss it,” Lucos said. It came out flatter than he intended.
“Clarify your statement,” Rex said.
“Smells. Things like that. Coffee. Rain. That burned oil stink you can’t scrub out no matter how hard you try. Old cabbage.”
“Smell is an inefficient sensory system,” Rex said. “Humans rely on it excesively.”
“Sure,” Lucos said. “And yet we long for it. At least for the good ones.”
They reached the galley. Lucos hooked one foot under a strap and squeezed a tube of protein paste into a cup. He squeezed too hard, splattering the rim.
“Great…” he muttered.
“You could simulate olfactory stimuli,” Rex said. “Atmospheric modulation is within my capability.”
Lucos shook his head. “No. That’s fake. Gimme real smells.”
“Fake implies an external standard,” Rex said. “None exists.”
Lucos took a sip, grimaced, then took another like it might improve out of spite. “That’s the problem.”
They didn’t talk for a bit. Just the low hum of the station, constant enough that he usually stopped hearing it. The Moon was good at silence. It didn’t rush you.
“Rex,” Lucos said eventually. “Do you ever get tired of this?”
“Tiredness is a biological condition,” Rex said. “I do not experience it.”
Lucos rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant. You know that.”
Rex hesitated. Not long. Just enough.
“I experience continuity,” Rex said. “Tasks follow tasks. Systems remain within parameters. This is—” He paused again. “—acceptable.”
Lucos almost smiled, but not quite. “Sounds lonely.”
“Loneliness requires absence,” Rex said. “You are present.”
Lucos looked at the robot then. The scuffed plating. The faint gray dust ground into seams no one had bothered sealing properly because it hadn’t mattered on Earth.
“Yeah,” he said. “For now.”
Outside, Earth stood above the crater rim and turned slowly. The same as every day.
Rex turned his head, tracking Lucos instead. “You will eventually leave.”
Lucos didn’t answer right away. He finished his drink and nudged the cup toward the recycler. It drifted crooked, bumped the intake, then corrected.
“Probably,” he said. “People tend to.”
“I will continue operations regardless of your presence,” Rex said.
Lucos pushed off the counter and drifted closer, stopping just short of the robot. “Try not to throw a party when I’m gone.”
“I do not celebrate,” Rex said.
Then, after a moment, “However, system efficiency decreases in your absence.”
Lucos raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“By less than one percent,” Rex added quickly.
Lucos laughed. Short. Real. A little surprised at himself.
“Careful,” he said. “That almost sounded like you’d miss me...”
“Correlation is not causation,” Rex said.
Lucos turned back toward the viewport, the Moon stretched out below them, endless and patient in a way that felt personal.
“Keep telling yourself that,” he said. “You will miss the efficiency lost when I’m gone.”
They stayed there for a while. Not doing anything useful. One man. One machine. Letting the silence sit, uneven and unpolished, with nothing pushing back.