{"id":5542,"date":"2025-05-15T21:04:25","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T19:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/?p=5542"},"modified":"2025-05-15T21:04:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T19:04:25","slug":"rooms-with-a-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/2025\/05\/rooms-with-a-view\/","title":{"rendered":"Rooms with a View"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Author:<\/strong> William Flores<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Luna Lux Base was the new crown jewel of the self-proclaimed Visionary Hundred, a group consisting of the twenty richest men in the world. Together, they funded this luxurious recreational settlement on the moon, which cost a whopping 2 trillion dollars to build. Devon Dusk, the mastermind behind this endeavor, convinced about half of his fellow Visionaries to follow him on a week-long trip to inaugurate the new base. The remaining half was skeptical because of Devon\u2019s notorious failure to set up an inhabited Mars colony a few years prior, which caused the death of six astronauts. This time would be different, assured the maverick billionaire. After all, he had made structural adjustments to his space company, keeping only the most competent workers, and replacing the other ones with the company\u2019s next-generation robots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delilah Grant, a veteran employee of Dusk\u2019s space company, was to be the Mission Control Ground Commander during the upcoming flight to the moon. Although she profoundly disliked Devon Dusk, she was loyal to the company, or at least its long-term mission: to make humanity a multi-planetary species. Ever since she was little, Delilah dreamt of one day traveling into space. However, her heart condition, which she inherited from her father Jeffrey Grant, did not allow her to do so. Although the realization that she could never blast off in a rocket ship was crushing to 12-year-old Delilah, that didn\u2019t dissuade her from contributing to humanity\u2019s expansion in the cosmos. And so she studied rocket science, literally, and became the Chief engineer at Dusk\u2019s space company. Behind every major innovation in rocketry was the hand of Delilah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, on July 25, 2039, Devon Dusk and his opulent party ascended into the sky like the virile demigods that they were. They were now well on their way to reach Luna Lux within the next two days. As part of the company\u2019s structural adjustment plan, Mission Control was almost entirely automated, except for Delilah who had to keep an eye on things, in case anything unexpected happened. This was not the case during the moon-bound trip of the Visionaries. They arrived safely at the new base, live-streaming the whole thing so that all of their followers could witness this most extraordinary moment in human history. Never have there been so many people on the moon at the same time! The number of viewers wasn\u2019t what the Visionary Hundred were used to back in the good old days, but the success of their flight warranted popping a few bottles of Prosecco. The alcohol was perhaps necessary to make up for the relatively bland food coming out of the food synthesizer, which transformed the Visionaries\u2019 organic waste into a nutritious paste. Even demigods had to make some concessions if they wanted to travel to space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, as the richest men in the world were having a week-long booze fest on the moon, sharing all of it online, Earth and its inhabitants were struck by another heatwave. The southern United States was hit very badly. Delilah was worried. The news talked about many wet-bulb 35 incidents, where people dropped like flies and died because of the fatal mix of humidity and heat, which effectively impeded the body from cooling down. People like Delilah and her father, were particularly vulnerable to such incidents, which is why she always made sure to stay indoors in air-conditioned buildings. Not everyone could afford the energy bills resulting from air-conditioning, however. A little over a decade back, the administration of the now disgraced Ronald Chump forced the United States to adopt an expensive coal and gas energy mix, locking the country into fossil infrastructure, as the rest of the world moved on to cleaner and cheaper renewables. Even Delilah\u2019s parents struggled with energy bills, despite their daughter being a Chief engineer. As part of Dusk\u2019s structural adjustment plan, her salary was cut by a third. \u201cRemember, we could easily automate even your job. So consider yourself lucky that I value you enough to keep you here,\u201d the billionaire said in the e-mail announcing Delilah\u2019s wage cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was two years ago. Delilah stayed because of her passion for the job. But with the heatwave, and the Visionaries\u2019 lavish lunar display, she felt sick to her stomach. A day before the scheduled return flight, a warning signal appeared on her display. Apparently, one of the company\u2019s internet satellites was losing altitude and straying from its intended orbit. This happened every now and then, and the solution usually involved adjusting the orbit by remotely turning on the satellite thrusters for a minute or so. Delilah was just about to do that when she received a call from her mother, telling her that her father had collapsed because of the heat. He was going to be okay, but doctors said he could have died. For a while, Delilah couldn\u2019t think straight. Her father could have died. He didn\u2019t deserve this, nobody deserved this. Delilah was lost in her thoughts when the warning signals grew louder. Duty called. And so, she skillfully brought the satellite to a new orbit. She was done for the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day, she heard about internet outages hitting various parts of the world on the car radio, as she was headed for work. She didn\u2019t think much of it. At Mission Control all systems were running perfectly for the return flight of Dusk and his billionaire friends. In the background, the automated systems were scrambling to course-correct the altitudes of hundreds of satellites. Word must have gotten to Dusk, as he directly contacted Delilah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou mean the satellites?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, the satellites, what else?!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you ever heard of Kessler syndrome?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other end of the line went silent. After a while, Delilah continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight now, dozens of satellites are crashing into each other, creating debris that will crash into more and more satellites, eventually enveloping the planet in so much satellite debris that any attempt to leave Earth\u2019s orbit or re-entering the atmosphere would be a suicide mission, meaning that your return flight will have to be delayed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The silence on the other end gave way to a whimpering question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow much delay?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delilah kept a matter-of-factly tone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d say thirty, forty, maybe fifty years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Screams and cries on the other end. The demigods were now weeping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delilah kept her composure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI suggest you relax, and make good use of the food synthesizer and those rooms with a view on our beautiful Planet Earth. It\u2019s gonna be a while. Oh, and don\u2019t worry\u2026 from up there you can\u2019t hurt her. Enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: William Flores The Luna Lux Base was the new crown jewel of the self-proclaimed Visionary Hundred, a group consisting of the twenty richest men in the world. Together, they funded this luxurious recreational settlement on the moon, which cost a whopping 2 trillion dollars to build. Devon Dusk, the mastermind behind this endeavor, convinced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[37],"class_list":{"0":"post-5542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-2025-spring","7":"tag-prose"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1002190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5542"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5562,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5542\/revisions\/5562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}