The Writings of Michael Varian Daly - "The Moon Is Red"

12:37 am - "The Moon Is Red"

Doctor Hipolito Rodriguez sat on the balcony of his Quito apartment looking up at El Tallo. He ate chicken in a mole' sauce with saffron rice and a fine Sonoma Cabernet. It was only an hour or so after dusk, so El Tallo still glowed with reflected over the horizon sunlight, a shimmering beam straight up into the night sky.

He gazed with bittersweetness upon what his late wife had called 'the great love of his life'. Doctor Rodriguez was a PhD in both structural engineering and materials science. And The Quito Space Elevator – El Tallo (The Stalk) – had been the focus of his dreams since he was a teenager in East LA's Boyle Heights over a half century ago.

His parents, a bus driver and a math teacher, had supported that dream, as had the entire neighborhood. El Tallo was the stated goal of the newly formed AEPA – la Agencia Espacial Pan Americo. In the exciting and chaotic aftermath of La Separación – the referendum that swept California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas out of the collapsing United States of America and back into an economically resurgent Estados Unidos de Mexico – Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico had formed AEPA as a way of uniting Latin America and pulling it into the future.

And it worked beyond their wildest dreams. Finally freed of their fear of the Norte Americanos, tens of millions of campesinos looked up at La Luna and thought, “She could be ours.” Hipolito had felt that too back in those heady days when he had gone from being a Mexican-American to an American Mexican. La Raza had reclaimed Azlan! Now Los Gabachos could 'suck it'.

Anything seemed possible in those days. The president of Mexico had solved the drug problem by legalizing everything and nationalizing production. The power of the gangs and cartels faded quickly and corruption was weeded out. The power of El Tallo was like a magic wand that transformed all obstacles into opportunities.

Quito was the obvious site for El Tallo. It was on the equator and over nine thousand feet above sea level. Ecuador became the fifth member of AEPA, followed rapidly by every other Latin American nation. No one wanted to get left behind.

The new project got a boost as tens of thousands of scientists and technicians, Hispanic and not, fled the United States to escape the violence of racial and religious civil war. This was hastened by a nuclear war in the Middle East that seemed to paralyze the US Federal government, tripled Latin American petroleum prices, and led the Europeans to sell their share of the International Space Station to AEPA.

Hipolito was working on his first Masters – structural engineering – in Shanghai when that agreement was made. Everyone, Latino and Chinese students alike, went out to get roaring drunk that night in celebration. The city even had an impromptu fireworks display.

The Cubans had brought in the Chinese. AEPA needed the extra funds and technical expertise. The Chinese needed a place to build a space elevator. The three other locations were at best problematic.

Indonesia was a hotbed of Jihadism which had become even more insane and desperate after the destruction of Mecca in an Israeli nuclear strike. Plus global warming was creating larger and stronger typhoons which battered all of South East Asia. Not a good location for a space elevator.

In the wake of worldwide economic instability, Central Africa was basically abandoned and had dissolved into a brutal round of tribal and religious warfare. The climate was stable, but the security concerns were insurmountable.

Brazil had wide equatorial plains that would provide plenty of room to build, but again, global warming had ruled that out. The terrible storms that brewed in the Atlantic were predicted to move further and further inland for the next several decades.

That left Quito.

Los Chinos were immensely helpful. Hipolito's two Masters and one of his Ph D's were earned at Chinese universities. Even the second PhD, from the University of Quito, was done mostly under the tutelage of Chinese instructors who had transplanted to Ecuador for that very purpose.

The project went ahead with great speed. Thirty seven years from Statement to Completion. There was rejoicing from San Fransisco to Terra Del Fuego for over a year after El Tallo began to operate. But while everyone had their eyes upon the sky, things had changed upon the ground.

With their economies booming and education free for all, the sons and daughters of Latin America's rural and urban poor had moved up into the middle class. With that came a labor shortage. To relieve it, the doors were opened to the rural poor of China's Ten Thousand Villages. They came in their millions and tens of millions.

Today, less than two decades after El Tallo's completion, over seventy percent of Ecuador's population was Los Chinos. Quito and Guayaquil now had more signs in Chinese than in Spanish. Nearly forty percent of Mexico was Los Chinos and the rest of Latin America averaged ten to twenty percent.

Cuba and Brazil were being ruined by the Atlantic storms, so were in no position to resist. Venezuela has faded into Mexico's shadow as oil became less and less important. Anyway, the government elites were half Chino themselves and quite content with their lot.

Hipolito didn't hate Los Chinos. They had been his teachers, friends, and colleagues for most of his life. His two sons-in-law were Chinese and his half dozen grandchildren... He sighed. He even spoke Mandarin better than he spoke Spanish, English being his first language.

But he wanted his own nation and culture. So many years struggling to throw off the Yankees and they had merely replace one yoke with another and one far more alien.

The final blow had been the Mainland 'negotiating' a sale of El Tallo by AEPA to a Chinese controlled consortium. Many Latinos had become angry about the Chinofiquismo of, well, everything. A protest movement had begun, Los Contra Chinos. It was countered by a pro-Chinos movement, which was very well funded. There were violent street battles. Laws were passed declaring 'anti-Asian agitation' as 'terrorism'.

That was when Hipolito had finally started to protest publicly. Soon after, he was visited by security agents. “Think of your family,” they said in soft tones and left him a small black pill.

That had been a week ago. He had spent time with his daughters and grandchildren, visited old friends, organized his affairs. This world had actually been his for an entire lifetime, which was more than his 'illegal' grandparents could have said.

The moon had come up over the mountains, a blood moon. “How brutally poetic,” he thought.

“Ozymandias!” he toasted and washed down the black pill with the dregs of the Cabernet.


© Michael Varian Daly 2007