I don't know what to do. I have to take this secret with me to the grave for others are depending on my silence. And yet the pressure of my silence is burning a hole through my head. It is literally killing me.

See, I alone know the truth of what happened on the 22nd of September 2029.

The world knows that date. It was a normal Harvest Moon, some press making catchy articles to drive ad revenue but really nothing special. More eyes turn to full moons though, and no one who looked could miss it. I was in Ogden Utah at the time, winding down on the back porch after another stressful training day on the base. The moon was just rising over the Rockies, just to the right of De Moisy Peak, looking oversized with the reference points of the mountain profiles. It had the reddish hue that early evening full moons had and drew my eye readily. I was watching it measurably creep upward when the pale red seemed to flicker, leaving blues and greens instead. It took some seconds for my mind to register the shocking change, but it finally started sinking in.

I scrambled out of my chair and inside for my binoculars, my fallen and shattered glass unnoticed on the concrete. The binoculars confirmed the radical color change, but no greater detail. I could barely stop staring at it, unable to comprehend what it meant, but I finally pulled out my phone and started checking news sources. Nothing. Social media was trickling, then flooding. Lots of pictures. Some memes already. Plenty of people asking questions. Some were even intelligent questions.

It lasted 25 minutes.

The color flickered again, and the moon returned to what it has always been. Almost always.

The news finally got the story and puzzled hosts and reporters do what they do: ask silly questions of the wrong people. It took a few days to confirm that not a single major telescope got pointed at the moon until after the color vanished. There were millions of images from phones, thousands from cameras with lenses, a few from amateur telescopes. None with real detail.

Artemis was nearly ready, and the decision to go gained even more pressure and momentum. My training schedule ramped up even harder.

Most people know me by name, since I was the science officer for that return landing to the moon. The only survivor from the surface.

The flight itself was incredible, but I don't remember the sensations of it any more. 32 years since helping to finish erasing that memory that started with the enormity of what we found.

I don't know how to continue. The habit of keeping silent has formed a wall within me that is tangible. Like a physical restraint keeping my fingers from typing out the words that reveal the truth. Who would believe me anyway at this point. Nutjobs. Wackos. The kind of people that would go camp at the gates of Area 51 after seeing Independence Day 4.

The public record states that contact was lost with the HLS Lander at an altitude of 391 meters above the surface and was never reestablished. The public record states that for 26 days NASA and ESA worked tirelessly night and day to try to figure out how to contact us, then when our liftoff didn't happen, how to rescue us. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter kept up a steady stream of imagery of our landing site, but told them almost nothing aside from the fact that the HLS Lander didn't crash. The crew in the MPCV was a helpless link to whatever hope was held. They expected that we would work to conserve whatever oxygen and water we had and the longest possible scenario was one survivor lasting 26 days before hypoxia and death.

After 26 days, focus shifted to recovery and finding out what happened. The MPCV and its two crew members were brought home shortly after. 35 days after contact was lost, NASA got an unmanned capsule to the moon, at the same coordinates of our landing site. Contact was also lost with that capsule at 391 meters altitude.

At 42 days, my HLS Lander lifted off of the surface of the moon and entered a ballistic return trajectory to earth. No contact was ever established and the lander was never going to survive reentry. A scrambled Dragon capsule on a Falcon Heavy managed to rendezvous and dock with the lander, burning all of its fuel to barely get the lander into a stable orbit, although highly elliptical. A week later, another Dragon was able to dock and a rapidly developed adapter allowed the crew to interface with the lander hatch.

I was inside, still alive. The body of my fellow crewmate strapped to his seat beside me.

We made splashdown a few hours later.

I had to lie. Every electronic device in the lander was fused to slag, there was no possible way to corroborate any story, true or false. The truth was absurd. And dangerous. I was debriefed for months. I held close enough to the truth to stay repeatable without revealing anything. You know the official conclusion that was reached. "Through an extraordinary display of ingenuity and resourcefulness one and the humbling and heroic sacrifice of the other, " etcetera.

There were suspicious people of course. The math didn't lie. I had survived 52 days on oxygen that would have been exhausted at 26. There was no explanation given or found for where the oxygen had come from. Theories and fan fiction abounded that maybe there actually was oxygen and habitable conditions on the moon. But no one of any real scientific mind believed that.

There was just that 25 minute glimpse of lush green and verdant blue on the moon to suggest all sorts of ideas.

None came close to reality.

No one suspected that the moon had been colonized. Or holographically masked. That glimpse everyone saw? A bug had crashed the software maintaining the holograph. And they neutralize any craft which pass within it to protect themselves.

They are peaceful. Fleeing their own past. A remnant of a remnant that was saved.

In the decades since, scientists have decided that moon dust is impossible for electronics to survive in, and no mechanical solutions to explore have been found. Political will has fallen, and no one even thinks seriously about returning to the moon any more.

It's for the best.