8 Seeds of Revolution - Part I

9th March

DELOS Offices, Old Settlement, Artemis

It was late night, or rather early morning, when I got off the phone with the Singaporean prime minister. We had spent hours talking about the conversation on everyone's minds recently: lunar independence. After Chinese state media first leaked the story, everyone on both worlds had been talking about it non-stop it seemed. For his part, the Singaporean prime minister was actually more open to the prospect than I had expected. Thinking about it, there are ways that lunar independence can be considered beneficial to Singapore. Singapore is under an extreme amount of international pressure to terminate DELOS, as no nation is supposed to have territorial control on the moon. And while Singapore doesn't make any claims to the moon, Artemis and many of the other large settlements, are the property of DELOS, which is part of the Singaporean government. All bureaucracies are an empire of technicalities and asterisks, and even the ungoverned moon is no exception it would seem.

Of course, the Singaporean government can't officially support lunar independence, but neither do they have to directly oppose it. In fact, the Prime Minister more or less said that if the ships keep ferrying people up to the moon, and resources down to Earth, Singapore would remain neutral. That's good. One less problem to worry about. But other than that, things are not going at all according to plan. China, and therefore the APEC super-state they lead, seem opposed to an independent moon. China wnts their own foothold on the moon, and an independent lunar state would deny them that. The access to the moon, and the rest of the solar system that we will provide in the future, are not enough for them. The Chinese government won't be able to rest, unless they had some amount of direct control on the moon.

ASEAN will likely follow where Singapore leads them. The resources of the moon have made Singapore an economic titan, and that has in turn made them the natural leader of the ASEAN super-state. Just as China is to APEC, and Germany to Europe. Another super-state that will likely support lunar independence is the Federation de las Americas. The Brazilian lead super-state will not reach the stars in any major capcity without assistance in the foreseeable future, and they are also natural enemies of APEC. They want tp extend their influence in Latin America, which is largely being challenged by APEC. The other super-states, Europe, the Commonwealth, the United States, and India, are much harder to predict, in terms of what stance they will take. Not to mention the other parts of the world, where the nation-state model is still prevalent. Dying, but prevalent. The Middle East, Africa, and Central America. Who knows what the reactions in these regions will be to the rise of a lunar state, but most likely it will be mixed.

But right now, I have more urgent issues than the super-states. Not all of the tigers bit at the meal I offered them. Medano has announced their support of an independent moon, and I think I know who told the Chinese about my plans, but the remaining three are holding their cards close to the chest. I've been in regular contact with all of them over the past few days, answering questions and offering deals, but it seems pretty clear that the situation will likely remain the same until some progress towards independence is made. Jun seems supportive, but the Huesong executives on Earth are nervous, and Ingprad is playing it cautious. Charles Fort clearly has a dislike for me, but it seems Fort-Leiher's leadership is forcing him to maintain a neutral standpoint for now. This isn't what I'd hoped for.

I had been relying on the tigers to support the movement, but I guess I shouldn't have expected any better. They're all businesspeople after all. Of course, they aren't going to go for this. Avoiding something as clearly dangerous as this is the basics of risk management. Without the tigers, I'm going to need something else to be the catalyst. I can't just declare the moon independent without any support. I need backing of some sort. The tigers and Artemis Energy collectively make up more than two-thirds of the lunar economy. I need something that will give me an equivalent amount of backing, and a good reason to declare the moon independent. I need a cause.

I make a coffee, and start thinking about it. An economy is not just made up of the money and natural resources at its' disposal, but the people. Yes, the real power of the tigers comes from the number of people that they employ on the moon. Artemis Energy alone employs almost twenty percent of the lunar population. I originally chose to ask for the support of the tigers, because I believed it was the best way to get the masses onside. In a society like what we have in Artemis right now, if you don't do what your bosses say, you have no protection. No courts to protect you from being fired and deported to Earth, no police to protect you if they come to kill you.

But the people are who I need on my side. For that, I need a cause to give to them, and convince them to work with me. It needs to be something powerful... something that will potentially make them even turn against their bosses. Something righteous, something justified. Justice. Justice? Wasn't there something like that...

I wake up sometime later, feeling a lot better for it. Today, I have a plan. Something that may even be better than the original plan. I almost wish I had thought of this a week ago. Or any time in the last ten years would've worked. I check the time: nine o'clock. The second shift of the day began an hour ago. By the time I'm on my way, traffic in the streets will be all but non-existent. I slept for about five hours, which is pretty good by my standards. I've never slept well my entire life. My head was always abuzz, thinkinh about one thing or the other, personal issues or plans for a grandiose future, but it has definitely gotten worse since I came to the moon. Probably because I gave up on maintaining a regular sleep schedule long ago. There's just no real reason to on the moon if you don't work a regular shift. I work twenty-four hours, seven days a week. I sleep whenever and wherever I can, and I'm grateful for it. I didn't bother walking up the spur to my apartment in Malacca after I worked out today's plan. I just slept on the couch here in my office. If I went home, all that would've achieved is waking up my children. Sometimes I think I spend more time sleeping here than in that apartment. I walk down the hall with a change of clothes under one arm. There's a public bathroom on this floor, so I'll use the showers here rather than going all the way home. On my way, I call the head of security for Artemis Energy, Yohn Çiçekler.

Yohn was also one of the first twenty settlers. A German citizen born to Turkish immigrants, he grew up in a rather difficult and challenging environment. The persecution and racism that he faced in his day to day life growing up, turned him into a hard man, and a driven worker. That's how he got to the moon. A lifetime of hard work, and effort.

"Morning Yohn," I say to him when he answers my call, "I'm heading out to Junction in an hour. I need a small security team, two people, to meet me in the lobby at ten. Can you do that?"

"Yes," he replies concisely. I expected him to then end the call as he often does, but he continued speaking instead, "the news reports are true, aren't they? Your going to go through with it, aren't you?"

"Yes, that's right."

There's no point in hiding the fact now. He had all but guessed it already, and besides, I trust him more than most people.

"Then does that mean your going to see Mei?"

"Do you want to come?"

I hear a pause, but then the call is abrupt end. Yohn is such a funny man, I think to myself. Still wound up about something that happened six years ago. Although, I guess you could say the same thing about me. I still wonder where she is after all this time.