Bitter Moon

Harvest Moon wanted revenge.

Her anger originated from before the day she was born, June 23, 1970; Harvest's rage went back to the day she was named. Her parents, a pair of Jewish hippies who were married at a commune they inhabited outside of Eugene, Oregon, had chosen what they considered a very clever name for their first (and only) child. They announced it at their wedding, a ceremony of dubious legality performed by the captain of a Portland-based fishing vessel.

The marriage took place two weeks before Harvest's birth; on that day the young lovers decided upon the name Harvest The Moon, in hopes that their daughter would one day grow up to become a NASA astronaut and live up to the somewhat unreasonable expectations of her birth certificate.

That is what her parents told her. She believed it.

One night when she was eleven years old and her parents thought she was asleep upstairs , she overheard her father, Ruben "Blue" Moon, explaining the story of Harvest's name to a small gathering of stoned, giggly guests in the downstairs 'group-space'.

"...well, back then Naomi and I would sneak out to where the old garden used to be- there used to be an old fence around it, y'know?...anyway, the night we think Harv was conceived, we were high as motherfuck and we were looking up at this big-ass moon, right?...and it was like, lighting up Naomi's ass like it was a second moon, and I felt like a farmer..."

"Blue, you rat!", giggled a stoned Naomi Moon, "stop right now!"

"Anyway, it was like a double harvest, y'know?" A flutter of spacy laughter followed this remark.

"Ha!", chortled a male voice," she's lucky you didn't name her 'Cabbage Patch'." More hazy guffaws erupted.
It was at this moment that Harvest had her first adult thought.
It was: I have been fucked-over since before I was born.

Moments later, she made her first adult decision: I will never get high as motherfuck.

It was then that her paisley-skirted mother rounded the corner and saw a blank-faced Harvest standing at the top of the wooden staircase. There wasn't enough light for her to see the single, betrayed tear running down the young girl's face.

"Harvie, go back to bed. Go to sleep."

Harvie went back to her room, but she didn't go to sleep. She began studying.
And plotting.

By the time she was 16, Harvie's academic over-achievements had garnered her countless awards and a half-dozen offers of full scholarships from the best universities in America. She chose one in the Northeast and graduated after three years with a double major in astrophysics and criminal justice. Two weeks later her parent's once-spurious prophecy was realized and Harvie was recruited into NASA's astronaut training program.
As was her custom, she finished at the top of her class.

That same year, serving as her own counsel,she won a 950 million dollar settlement against a defense manufacturer that had developed an inexpensive and extremely heat-resistant polymer suitable for insulating everything from plumbing pipes to re-entry spacecraft. The company had appropriated the chemistry for this material from one of Harvest's 10th grade Science Fair projects.

Harvie had placed second in the Fair, losing to a fidgety boy named
Mick Mudd who had used a mail-order 'Ant Farm' to demonstrate his theory that ants were biologically programmed to be Marxists. When the panel of corduroy-clad professors announced the winners, Harvie mentally added Mudd's name to her already-lengthy shit-list. The teachers had been on it since her first day of classes.

After the settlement, H.T. Moon stayed with NASA, becoming the world's first female millionaire astronaut. It was on her second Space Shuttle mission that she made the most momentous decision of her short but eventful life. Harvie was performing a routine spacewalk, repairing damaged insulation panels of her own design , when she looked up/down at the hypnotic blue Earth above/below her. She paused in her work and pondered.

I am rich beyond belief and I am allowed to fly spacecraft. I could destroy this planet or I could save it.
I am high as motherfuck.

Harvest Moon wanted revenge.