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Last time we left him Grandpa Simon was contemplating just how far he had come in the article Moon Heaters.

So how could he convince people to go back to something that they hadn’t liked very much? That was the problem. In the old days when people hadn’t had enough to eat then it was a very personal problem, and now although everyone knew that eating the cheese was causing the whole moon to fall away it was somebody else’s problem. Simon knew that everybody else thought that somebody else was going to solve it, and there was no motivation to bother. Because why bother to come up with a solution when eating the cheese right now isn’t going to harm anyone. That was the problem, each slice of cheese wasn’t hurting anyone by itself, it was just when everyone took a slice three or four times a day that they had started to run into trouble.

Everyone was hoping somebody else was going to solve the problem, but now Simon realised that if anything was going to happen then it would have to be him who would solve the problem.

He thought about taxes, that might be an idea. A way of rationing the cheese, by saying that people could only have a slice after they had done a day of work doing something else. But how would you enforce it? The whole planet was made of cheese, they could just bend down while working and eat a piece? Or more likely just eat at home and not work.

If only there was some way of trying to cover the whole planet some way of stopping them from getting at the cheese. But how would you do that? Maybe, Simon thought suddenly he didn’t need to stop them from getting at the cheese, what if he just made it so that they couldn’t eat the cheese any more. What if he could poison the cheese?

There was, in the armoury from the old days of war huge vats of mouse poison. If he could get it into the source of the cheese then he would be able to stop everyone from eating the cheese. The cheese did grow a little bit each year. It grew out from the centre of the moon. The aristocracy had always kept it in check by eating enough never more, never less. They had maintained the balance.

But how to get to the core of the moon? That was going to be tricky itself? But Simon had an idea, he would appeal to the greed of the mice. He would tell them that the core of the planet had the greatest tasting cheese of all time in it, and that if they could dig down to it then it would mean great cheese for those that had done it. He would have to get together a band of these Moon Miners but he knew with the promise of tasty cheese and a lie saying that that they would have rights to own the land down there would be enough to tempt them down.

He knew what he was doing would destroy the aristocracy as everyone would have to work, and he didn’t mind that too much. Although he had now a new found respect for them as they had realised something far more important than he had about the way to keep the moon in balance. But he knew more than the aristocracy he would be destroying himself. There is no way he would survive. He’d be killed for sure.

Will Simon succeed? Tune in next Friday for the final instalment.

The last time we left Simon he was contemplating his future. If you don’t know about Simon and what he was contemplating then you might want to check out the first half of the story which was called:

Moon Eaters

The common mouse was ruining the moon. That’s what was happening in one way. But on the other hand what was happening to the aristocratic mouse? Before they had lived off of the moon and had loved every fat second of it. But now they were going crazy. They still felt the need to show that they were better than the common mouse, and although Simon had tried to introduce other foodstuffs into the court as a way of stopping the slippages the rest of them were simply consuming more and more. Some of them had started melting down the cheese and bathing in it. This was simply the most preposterous idea Simon had ever heard in his life! They were bathing in cheese, which was dangerous in the first part because the temperature was so high, and then those mice that survived had to take a regular shower in one of the rain towers anyway.

But what could Simon do? The whole idea of a Mouse utopia where every mouse could concentrate on higher things because they had food enough to eat had backfired. Instead of what he had planned where mice had everything they needed, and they then looked towards the more scholarly world to enrich their lives, instead of that they had all become lazy. It was terrible.

Simon picked up a piece of stilton and looked at it. He thought back to the world of his youth. Who could remember what life was like back then. After ten years of everyone eating cheese, after thirteen years of him eating cheese it was difficult to remember what it was like the very first time he had seen another mouse do it. But he could.

It was later in the day after he had helped the prince win in the fight. They hadn’t really spoken about anything other than fighting and women. The prince was a dignified man in the correct social circles, but after that fight he was ready to talk as men do. Mainly he spoke about other fights and women, but he also mentioned drink and food. This last point interested Simon more than any other. Because Simon had a very distinguished white spot in the middle of his back which had made him rather a success with the ladies, and so he wasn’t much interested in conversations about how to get girls and what to do with them once he got them. Because for Simon that was something that had always come naturally. But food was a different matter. Simon had never been truly able to apply himself. And he had always had to rely on the help of strangers. So food was always at the front of Simon’s mind especially on that day in particular when he hadn’t eaten for at least three days.

So as Simon looked at this Stilton. This cheese that he had just picked up out of the ground, and was considering putting into his mouth he remembered just how far he had come.

Tune in next Friday for more from the Moon.