The Labyrinth of the Moon

The moon is a labyrinth, and no-one knows what is at its centre. You can enter the labyrinth of the moon from any of its small craters. Either of the nostrils of the Man in the Moon’s face would do. From the various entrance points, tunnels run left, right, and towards the centre of the moon, intersecting and criss-crossing in impossibly complex patterns. Schematic pictures of the labyrinth of the moon survived the Second Apocalypse; those pictures show that the tunnels light up in some places, and are dark in other places. Most lunologists now agree that the most likely reason is that when you get into the labyrinth, the tunnels inside are lit on the side that faces the sun, with solar power fuelling the lights many kilometres deep, and dark on the dark side of the moon (which is not to be confused with the far side of the moon). They say that as the moon orbits the earth and as the earth orbits the sun, so the tunnels of the moon’s labyrinth are lit once on this side, and then on that, and then another. So if you were lucky, and you turned all the right ways at the right time, you might stay always in the light. But if you were unlucky, and you turned always in the wrong ways at the wrong time, you might always be in the dark. In theory, a ‘rinther could time their run perfectly to coincide with the dual orbits of the moon and earth, skilfully running in the exact right direction, at the exact right time, and at the exact right angle, matching it all together in perfect precision, like a giant solar-power lunar Rubik’s globe.  

I saw you sneaking into the labyrinth. The glint of your silver hair gave you away as you crept in, giggling. It was your life’s work, you’d been studying for this moment your entire life. And when it came, you just ran in, as if you were a little child running into the sea for the first time, rather than the distinguished scientist the world knew you as. I was meant to be there as your security – you had studied Lunar Labyrinth Theory your entire life, but you were not a lunanaut – that was my role. I was the true Lunatic – in that respect, at least. We were meant to be a team – you, the expert ‘rinther, who’d run the simulated projections of the intricacies of the moon-tunnels a thousand times or more, undoubtedly more than any other being on earth. And I, the lunanaut, I who had studied lunology my entire life, and had led more successful landings and reccies of the surface tunnels than any other being on earth. We were a match made in Luna; the perfect pair to penetrate the moon’s secrets together, to go deeper than anyone had gone before. I knew the surface tunnels like no-one else, and you knew the theory of the deeper levels as yet unpenetrated by modern humans. Neither of us could do without the other; your theory was devoid of any practical experience, and my experience lacked any theoretical understanding of the deeper levels.

And when it came to the core – well, there we would both be fucked. Past explorations told us what to expect from the surface tunnels; deep muon tomography told us what to expect from those just beneath the surface, up to a depth of no more than 10km; but beneath that, no-one could even really guess (though plenty tried). In terms of the centre of the labyrinth, the extant iconography is much more ambiguous than that of the surface. Some images present simply a white circle; others a black circle; others a circle in various forms of half-white half-black; and others yet of hieroglyphics variously interpreted as the sun, as the earth, as the moon itself, as the human mind, as a question mark, as a vehicle of some sort, as a key, as hell or heaven, as a devil or deity, and a thousand, a million other scholastic and lay interpretations.  

So we were supposed to do this together – and yet there I was, sitting on a moon rock, getting our supplies together, going over our plan one last time, when off you ran – tee-heeing as you disappeared into the left nostril, taking one last look at my bewildered face, winking at me, and then you were gone. You knew I was only an amateur ‘rinther! And yet you left me behind to chase you all the same. And how could I resist the challenge? Your teasing, mocking face; the gleaming lights from within the moon-tunnels; the chance to be the first to reach the centre and uncover the scared middle of the moon? 

And so the race was on. 

My heart followed you in long before my feet. We were on the sun side, and as I entered I saw the illustrious moon-tunnels bathed in luminescence. This was not new to me; I had lived the surface tunnels ten times or more. But I had never gone beyond a few turnings this way and that – only ever measuring things like the changing light levels, or the air density and pressure, but not with the intent of creating a topography. As I stepped further in, the colour of the luminescence changed radically before I could have been more than 50 metres deep. From the glaring white blazing of the surface walls, obviously lit by the sun behind us, the light quality changed – not suddenly, but bit by bit, so gradual that at first I didn’t notice. As I turned left and right, at right angles and angles obtuse, I went deeper and deeper in, both chasing you and racing you, the gleaming white of the surface tunnels melding into a glowing green. The luminescence was becoming a bioluminescence. 

When I realised that, I was so humbled that I had to sit down. My light was now living. I was surrounded by deep lunar life. I took a few deep breaths to calm down my dazzled brain. As I sat, no longer running, no longer rushing to catch you, nor beat you to the centre, I began to notice that my stillness brought about movement in the moon walls. The bioluminescence was shifting, changing, moving. My human mind, never have before been in such an environment, made sense of it in the only way it knew how, and I was suddenly propelled into the feeling that I was at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by ancient sea creatures. Even though I knew I was sitting in a moon tunnel of rock, I felt that I was floating, suspended in water. 

I thought back to the ancient pictures I had seen of a moving, shifting lunar luminescence that my terrestrial ancestors knew more of than I did, and in a flash I realised that everything that modern lunologists had hypothesized about this phenomenon was wrong – the light in the deep tunnels of the moon didn’t change according to its position relative to the sun per se, but according to the rhythmic patterns of the deep lunar bioluminescent creatures, whose periods of light and dark couldn’t possibly be tied to the moon’s solar position, since they had no way of “knowing” what that was – nor would they care. 

I heard you sigh with joy. You were having the same experience as I, somewhere else within the moon’s mysteries. I called out to you, as softly as I could, barely emitting a noise at all, yet it thundered all around. You cackled like a naughty child, and I heard your footfall patter away, further into the depths. But my lust for the race was ebbing out of me. A sense of deep serenity was washing through me. I had never known such peacefulness. As the sound of your footsteps faded out, I became lost in the black and green. The movement of the luminous creatures began to increase in speed, as if my stillness encouraged their curiosity; I was no longer experiencing, but being experienced. They were now watching me. They began to dance across my vision, moving swiftly now this way and that, stopping to look, moving to tell the others, until the patterns of movement began zipping; it seemed chaotic at first, but as time went by I felt it shifting into a pattern; and before long, the pattern began to synchronize. Now my sensation of being at the bottom of the ocean melded into something new, and I now felt like a guest in the giant luminescent network of the lunar brain. I felt like an infinitesimally tiny particle visitor, watching the inner workings of the moon as it communicated with itself, talking to itself about me, asking itself, who is it? What is it? What is it made of? What does it want? I lay down flat as the green-lit creatures pulsed above, around, and beneath me, the better to allow it access to my physical being, and, perhaps, to synchronize with the excited potential of my mind. I closed my eyes, allowing the pulsating green to dissipate beneath my eyelids and become fireworks, a dream machine, the sun shimmering beneath canopy. 

I don’t know how much time passed as I lay there, but when my consciousness began to change again, I dared to open them. As soon as I did I realised that another patterned change had taken hold of the creatures, again so slowly, so gradually that I hadn’t noticed until it had passed the threshold of my awareness. When I looked again, the bioluminescence had stopped zipping, pulsating, and moving, and was now single specks dotted along the tunnel, like a million green eyes, all blinking down at me. Once again my sense of being shifted radically, and from feeling like a tiny speck in a living brain I suddenly felt again like a human on earth, as I had in years gone by, out in what was left of the earth’s wilderness, seeing the multitude of the stars which most had heard about but few had seen, but which I had had the fortune to bear witness to in my lunar training in the remotest deserts on earth. 

With this I felt human again, and I felt, more than heard, you calling my name, teasing me for lagging so far behind, beckoning me in further. I could just picture you, your shining brown eyes mocking my awe – though I knew you were as taken as I – as you ploughed on ever deeper. I sat up suddenly, got to my feet, and began to give chase again. 

Infused with their curiosity, I now felt energised, driven by a burning, unquenchable need to find the centre of the labyrinth, and, what’s more, to find it faster than you. I began to run, all the while floating in the lunar-sea, travelling in the lunar-mind, being watched by the lunar-stars. I ran through the tunnels, no way of knowing whether I was moving up or down, left or right, deeper or shallower, closer or further away from the centre. 

I ran so fast, so far, and so directionless that I ran straight into total darkness. Totally by accident, I found myself in the dark side of the moon. My luminous guides were gone – whether they were there but sleeping, whether I had run into a place where they dared not tread, or whether they were mockingly watching me in darkness, I did not know. Such total darkness I had never before encountered. I knew what would happen before too long, yet I was totally unprepared for it. We have all heard the saying horror vacui, “nature abhors a vacuum”, and I knew from my training that mind abhors emptiness – space will always be filled. I knew this to be true, but how could I know what my mind’s emptiness, what this particular nature’s vacuum, would be filled with? 

At first I began to see swirling colours; shimmers of light, sensations of colour. They shifted kaleidoscopically, geometric patterns unfurling before me, sometimes pleasant and calming, sometimes so immediate and intense I felt my vision burning. And then images – I don’t know of what – each image melded into the next so quickly I only had the briefest impression of one before it shifted into the next. I felt myself going mad. I panicked at first, trying to claw at the remnants of my sanity, trying to hold it in place, to stop the cacophony. My anxiety skyrocketed, as I knew I would never be able to piece together these disparate fragments of reality into a coherent whole again.  

But as I realised that, and began to make my peace with my lunacy, the terror began to wane, and I could watch it all unfurl, chaotically, without feeling the need to grasp it any more. As that happened, the kaleidoscope began to slow, and to reform into a single light at the end of the tunnel I was in. It burned, a tiny, infinitesimally small speck of light at a distance unimaginably far away. I thought, I have come back to the surface! I must have somehow double-backed on myself, and I’m seeing a crater-entrance, sun-side of the moon. Relieved, I began to make my way to it.

I no longer felt the need to run – the race was over, and I had lost; the chase was over, and you had won. I slowly ambled my way toward the light. Realising how tried and thirsty I was, I retrieved my stash of water and drank deeply; I must have been starved of water, as I felt it quench my brain as if I had not drank for days. 

The light grew slowly and slowly brighter as I painstakingly plodded, left foot and right, left foot and right, towards the speck of light, and as it got bigger and bigger, eventually I began to be able to discern the dark rocky formations of the tunnel walls around me. On and on I walked, quenching my thirst as I needed, feeling my life force building as I neared closer and closer to the light. 

At last, I reached the opening. The light was so bright now that I needed to put on my eyeshades to cope with the ever-brightening. I put my hands on the sides of the tunnel opening and walked through.  

You were standing there, bathed in light, your impish face teasing me for getting out of the tunnel last. But as I cast around, expecting to see the familiar craters of the Man in the Moon, I frowned, confused, upon only seeing you, drenched in light, standing and looking at a raised dais, that I now realised was in the centre of the moon. 

You shifted your gaze from me to the offering at the centre, and as you did your expression changed from mischievousness to pure awe. I slowly made my way to you, and you took my hand in yours. We gazed at each other in pure delight, as we stood together, discovering at last what was at the centre of the labyrinth of the moon.