Catfish McDaris

The Giraffe That Jumped Over the Moon

Dr. Danny Quick used the last of his Jimi Hendrix stamps to mail off his manuscript to California. Maybe Jimi would bring his screenplay good luck, who knows. Or at least drench it in acid sunshine vibes and ripple it toward a psychedelic future already folded into vast ocean-front properties of all time. 

Either way, it was Ernest Hemingway’s birthday. Santiago, the Cuban fisherman in The Old Man and the Sea, never gave up. 

How he felt sometimes about his writing. Never give up. Or always. Life of suicide. 

Did Hemingway actually give up? Did Thompson? Did Brautigan? Or did they just need to catch up on some sleep?

Maybe a change of scenery. Live on the moon. All these rich people flying into outer space. All it took was greed, power, and money. Big money. 

Dr. Quick had degrees in astrophysics, mechanical engineering, and paleontology. He spoke four languages fluently, had lived in many different countries growing up and as an adult. He could fix anything and he was in excellent physical condition from Tai Chi and martial arts.

The meteorite ALH84001 from Mars was discovered with fossils of diatoms. Required further investigation. Dr. Quick was intrigued. Rumors in the scientific community that ancient giraffe fossils had been discovered on the moon. 

Quick had been studying the gaping theory in Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species claiming that a horse-like animal converted into a giraffe due to the need to eat from higher tree branches. The Okapi was the ancestor and migrated to feed.

Paleontologists were split into many distinct groups on the theories about the Sivatherius fossils being from giraffes with a trunk like an elephant. Some scientists believed the giraffe came from a Samotherium from the late Miocene era or 14.6 million years ago. 

Dr. Quick had participated in isotope fractionation tests for fossils. Some thought the origins of life could be buried in lava flows on the moon. If a lunar regolith were conducted and organic molecules remained intact, there would be no reason fossils should not be found on the moon. 

Quick had studied the knowledge of the Babylonians, the Nubians, and the Chinese about dark matter and dark energy. His vast computer-like mind held information about gamma ray bursts, cosmic microwave radiation, the Magellanic Cloud, and the Andromeda Galaxy. Quick had flown airplanes, jets, and helicopters for many years. He had worked for NASA and had almost gone to space; he was overqualified if anything. He was just waiting for the next mission.

Dr. Quick arrived in Antarctica to aid in the examination of ALH84001, the Martian meteorite. Temperatures there could reach -129 Fahrenheit, it was 98% ice. It was the coldest, driest, windiest, highest average elevation continent on Earth and still considered a desert. There were no permanent residents. 

The research facility was in an old whaling building on Deception Island. There were glaciers, an active volcano, chinstrap penguins, and fossilized plants. 

The tests conducted there were inconclusive, therefore not considered successful. 

Quick’s next journey would take him to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia to continue his study of the ancestors of the giraffe. He had been there before and had many friends, Mongols, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs. 

Quick believed that the Aepycamelus or giraffe camel of the Gobi was the ancestor he sought, but he required scientific proof. 

The theory that the giraffe came from the Brachiosaurus did not seem realistic to him. 

In Australia he had a message from NASA, a new discovery. With the Keplar Space Telescope, they discovered an Earth-like planet: Keplar 452-b. It revolved around a sun much like ours. NASA wanted Quick to report to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas as soon as possible. 

Quick notified his crew and they were soon on their way. Quick communicated with NASA in flight, the International Space Center was now fully staffed with six crew members from Japan, Russia, and the United States. 

The success of this mission made the moon mission more viable and important. The moon launch was now being moved forward due to the discovery of Keplar 452-b. 

The settlement was planned for one of three places: the Imbrium, Nectaris, or Serenitatis basins. That would be determined upon a closer inspection of the moon’s surface. 

On Quick’s last visit to the Johnson Space Center, he and a team of experts designed the geodesic dome for six months’ habitation on the moon. It would be an icosahedron lattice shell on the surface of a sphere. 

Dr. Quick suggested they use a Buckminster Fuller design of continuous tension and discontinuous compression. With hardly any modifications, two of the six spaceships could be cannibalized into the material necessary for the construction of the dome. The remaining four ships could be fitted to carry the extra twelve crew members back to Earth once the mission was completed. 

Some Washington politicians did not want to fund exploration or the possibility that a space colony could be established on the moon. Others wanted to send unmanned spacecraft to Pluto and Mars, which would do nothing to alleviate overpopulation. 

NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. had leaked it to the press that they had received two donated telescopes that were superior in every way to the Hubble Space Telescope, and they were being kept in storage. Quick suggested they take them both to the moon and place them temporarily or permanently to investigate and research the galaxy.

Blast-off was scheduled from Japan, Russia, China, the United States, England, and France. The thirty-six astronauts chosen were highly educated in diverse scientific ways. 

Dr. Quick was chosen second in command of the Americans. 

Just before the launch, Quick heard that his science fiction adventure manuscript was being made into a big budget movie. 

The six moon landings were all perfect touchdowns. 

The Americans and Japanese moved in with the Russians and French. They lived in the four-space craft remaining until the dome was finished. 

Living in the dome was a luxury compared to spacecraft life. Once Quick got situated, he set up the two telescopes they had brought along. 

While anchoring the base of the telescope, he found some unusual rock formations. He carried them back to the dome, and upon further examination, he knew they were fossilized giraffe bones. Quick had been seeking these fossils all over Earth and now finding them on the moon was a most shocking discovery. He thought about his dream and about the script he had written that was now going to be a movie. 

The alien giraffes, Glorft and Guzal, looked down at the moon dome from their invisible cloaked spaceship. They spoke to each other telepathically.

“Should we let our human-looking son, Qetazq, know for sure about us?” 

“I think not, he could probably manage it, especially since you’ve been sending him dreams. But the rest of Earth is not ready for our advanced technology.” He paused. “Or intelligence.”