The Lunarian Dream (Part One)

8th March

Artemis City Station, near Yttrium Valley, Artemis

The short train ride from the spaceport to the city of Artemis was relatively uneventful. Although it was a twenty-kilometre journey, and took about fifteen minutes, I could've sworn I merely closed my eyes for a second and we were there. I think everyone on the train felt the same. We were just so enamoured by the fact that we were on the moon. I mean, we were on the moon! I'm on the moon! Although, I suppose that isn't as amazing as it once was. I must be about the eighty thousandth person on the moon. Nothing special at all. But still, looking out the window of a train and seeing the Earth in the sky above isn't something many people can say they've seen.

The shuttle up to the moon only took about three days, sixty-eight hours to be exact, and during that time the fifty passengers (including myself) first experienced no gravity. It had been a strange sensation, but lunar gravity felt even weirder after that. The return of gravity was comforting, but the lack of strength to the gravity was laughable. When we were at the spaceport, we were equipped with weighted boots so that we didn't go flying into the ceiling. Some laughed at that, but the instructors were very serious about it. The boots didn't give us the feel of gravity similar to Earth, that would be counterintuitive, but it did make walking a lot easier. It makes the lunar gravity feel about twice as strong, still only about a third of Earth's, but it's a good stepping stone.

On arrival at Artemis, the fifty of us get off. The train continues southeast to Junction, where I will be headed shortly, on my way out to one of the distant settlements. Inside the station proper, there are people in business suits waiting, holding placards out in front of themselves. Each placard has a company logo on it. Straight to business already, I suppose. That makes me a little sad. It might be a small city on a small world, but I was hoping to look around Artemis at least a little. Going through Yttrium Valley, see the original settlement, and go look around the markets of New Singapore… I'd hoped for at least that much sightseeing.

I see the card I'm looking for. A petite Chinese woman holds a placard with the words Artemis Energy on them. That's my new employer as of two weeks ago. Artemis Energy is a gargantuan business. It would be no overstatement to say Artemis Energy made Singapore the economic capital of the world. Artemis Energy is a subsidiary of DELOS, the government of the moon in all but name. As part of the deal DELOS made with each and every corporation that supported the joint venture to the moon, DELOS was given exclusive rights to the moon's vast reservoirs of helium-3. Helium-3 is the current leading source of energy on the world. Great nuclear plants on every continent use helium-3 in fusion to create vast sums of energy. Some estimates say helium-3 harvested by Artemis Energy accounts for seventy percent of the world's energy supply. I guess that makes Frank Scuderi, the Governor of Artemis, the 21st century equivalent of an oil tycoon.

I join the small crowd around the woman. There's about ten of us, but I already knew that. I overheard quite a few people on the shuttle mention that Artemis Energy was their employer, and Artemis Energy is constantly looking to increase its' workforce, so it isn't surprising that a fifth of my fellow passengers are my co-workers. They employ over ten percent of the lunar population, after all.

The lady begins to speak after she counts to make sure that we are all here, and within her hearing, "welcome to Artemis. My name is Jaime Zhu Hai, I'm part of the human resources team for Artemis Energy in Dunstan. I'll be working with you over the next couple of days."

I groan when I hear that, but mine is muffled out by those of my new co-workers. I guess I'm not the only one who wanted to do some sightseeing. If she's from Dunstan (where I'm headed after this), perhaps we're not even going into Artemis at all. What a shame. To come all the way to the moon to not even see the only city on the moon.

"Don't look so down!" she says cheerfully, "there's only three trains a day out to Dunstan, and even if we rushed down to Junction, we might not make it in time for the midday train. So… we're catching the train at four, which means we have almost five hours. We meet back here at two forty-five to take the train down to Junction. Till then your free to do as you wish. Come see me before you go so that I can check you off!"

After hearing that, the mood of the crowd dramatically lightens up, and people rush to be first to sign off and go. As they get signed off, the lady hands them each a map, and then they head off in twos and threes. Giddy at the chance to look around the city of Artemis. I happen to be the last one to walk up to her.

"And you must be… Maria," she beams at me as she uses her finger to tick my name off on her phone.

As she hands me a map, I ask her, "is there anything you would recommend going to see?"

She keeps smiling as she answers, "to be completely honest with you, this city isn't really all that special. I guess if anything the market in New Singapore…" she points at my map, "is probably worth checking out. It's also a good way to see the city. You just take the central route, see, and you'll get to see the whole city. You could also look at where the original settlers lived in the Old Settlement."

"Okay thank you," I smile thinking how odd that is for me to do.

I guess she's one of those people who you can't help but smile at, when they smile at you. Infectious, I think, is the word I'm looking for.

I leave by myself, unlike the rest, but that isn't by chance. I don't really go out of my way to talk to other people. I take her advice and pick up the central route heading clockwise, alone. The trams are automatically operated, and move at a crawl's pace. This is due to the only other traffic in Artemis being foot traffic. As such, the trams move barely faster than walk pace. Not that there are many people walking around at this hour. Officially, Artemis runs on Singapore time, but that doesn't mean much up here due to the three-shift days. The majority of Artemis follows the standard three-shift day first used by Artemis Energy. Since there is no natural twenty-four hour night and day cycle on the moon, the majority of corporations split their workforce into three, and have them each work eight hour shifts, hence the three-shift day. It means roughly a third of the population is always working, a third on free time, and another third sleeping. Work, play, sleep. And right now, is part-way through a shift, so there isn't many people walking around Yttrium Valley, the big business district of the city. The three-shift day has been so effective on the moon, improving net productivity by almost three times, that some corporations tried to replicate it on Earth, but it never stuck. It was too hard to convince large portions of the population to have such unnatural sleep schedules. But of course, that isn't a problem on the moon.

As I ride the tram, I notice that the few people who are walking around, or are on the tram with me, have almost exclusively short hair. I wonder why that is. The tram passes through Yttrium Valley, the economic and technological capital of the moon. It's a bit underwhelming, really, and thinking back on what the lady said, maybe that's what I should expect of this entire city. The buildings look like any skyscrapers you would find in any major city on Earth, the only differences being ugly concrete pillars that stretch up to the cavern ceiling. And the fact that there isn't a sky. That's the other big difference. What do you call an underground skyscraper? An Earthscraper? Dirtpiercer? Lunarscraper? Lunarscraper, I like that one.

All the large corporations and nations and superstates of Earth had offices here in Yttrium Valley. Fort-Lieher, the African Union, NASA, and the Australian embassy all share a lunarscraper. The most impressive of all, however, were the ones down the far end closer to the Old Settlement. Here the first arrivals on the moon had there lunarscrapers, and many were large enough to own their individual ones. Huesong, China, Ingprad, ESA and Roscosmos, and ASEAN, all had their own lunarscrapers down this far end.

By taking the clockwise route, I skipped past the Old Settlement only seeing it fleetingly to the north. It was the only part of Artemis that has not been completely developed. No lunarscrapers or apartment blocks had replaced the original site. The suburbs of Diana and New Singapore were nothing special. There was a small series of shops on the ground floor of the apartment blocks along Diana's main street, but other than that it, was a strictly residential area. New Singapore was much the same, but without the ground floor shops. The small businesses of New Singapore had all relocated within the last year or so to a series of five or six apartment blocks near the western end of the suburb.