Seeds of Revolution - Part II

9th March

Artemis City Station, Yttrium Valley, Artemis

To convince the people of the moon that lunar independence is in their best interest, I need a cause for them to be able to unite around. Something powerful, that will allow me to achieve my goal. To do that, I need to visit an old friend: someone who I haven't talked to for a long time.

The train to Junction comes past at eleven. It stopped at the Artemis City Station to drop off new arrivals from the spaceport. They all point and looked at me. New arrivals always stop to stare and point at me. The man in the moon, himself. But this time, it was different. Some of the stares were provocative, and angry. The man in the moon was rebelling. He's a dangerous beast, and an enemy to the people of the world. It's only natural to give such slighting looks at Frank Scuderi.

The journey to Junction was short and boring. There wasn't anyone else on the train other than myself and two guards. I didn't feel like looking out the window, not that there would be anything worth looking at, so I close my eyes. I think about messaging Kyle, but he won't be back on Earth yet. He left the same night I told him to go find Alexander for me, so he will be arriving in Singapore later tonight. There isn't any reason to message him. Jazz, then? No, there isn't any reason to message him either. I'm only thinking like this because I'm so bored.

With nothing to do, I find myself thinking about her, as I often do. When I left for the moon with the first twenty, I had a wife and a child who I left behind. Aria and Alexander. But Aria disappeared just a couple of months after I had gone to the moon, leaving Alexander on his own. She had never been found, not that any major efforts had been made to look for her. The police, of course, hadn't really been willing to look for her since she wasn't a Singaporean citizen. Kyle had put in many hours and days looking for her, and to his credit, it had felt like he was close. For a few years after she first disappeared, there would be a sighting somewhere. In America, Switzerland, Uruguay, and everywhere in betweem. It was impossible to work out what she was doing and why, but I'm sure there was a reason. A method to the madness. But there hasn't been a single sighting of Aria for over three years now. For all I know, she could be dead. Buried somewhere no one will ever find her.

The settlement of Junction is sometimes referred to as the 'vertical town'. It lies on a cliff on the edge of the Sinus Medii, and the town stretches down the cliff face, rather than along it. The station lies at the top of the cliff, above the rest of the town. There's a lookout in the station, that extends out from the cliffside. Due to the low lunar gravity, the lookout can reach out much further from the cliff, to a length that would be impossible in terran gravity. Even though I walk out and look over the edge every time I come through Junction, it still feels disconcerting every time.

From the lookout, you can see the town below, with lights popping out of small pinprick windows all up and down the cliff, stretching for many hundreds of metres below. A large curving rampart, stretches out from the station, and stands out away from the cliff. I've seen it from down on the seafloor, and it is incredibly impressive to look up at. A juge structure that scales the entire fifteen hundred metre drop from the plateau that Artemis lies underneath, and the floor of the Sinus Medii. An incredible and ingenious feat of engineering prowess that wouldn't be possible in Earth's gravity. Or at least would've taken many more years and many more resources to construct.

The rampart is lined by two monorail tracks. At the bottom, one splits off to the west, where the rampart is divided in two. This track continues westward out to the gold and iron mines of Nova California, in the Copernicus. The other track, the main line, runs and continues all the way down to the south pole. Many settlements can be found along the way. Stockholm, Iowa, NASA's Tycho Station, Apollo, and if you continue past the pole, Farside. It is, no matter how disconcerting, quite a magnificent lookout.

I make my way down the levels of Junction, to the address of Chee Soon Mei. Mei was one of the leaders of the first twenty. She was in her twenties when we first arrived on the moon, but still took a leading role due to her tought personality, and stubborn attitude. After the mass immigration began, she moved to the new settlement at Apollo, then briefly to Stockholm, before settling in Junction for the last few years. From the outside, it would seem that she likes the isolation of the small frontier settlement lifestyle, but I don't think that has anything to do with it. Yes, there are two reasons she left Artemis, and that is not one of them.

Each level of Junction is about five hundred metres long, hugging the cliffside, and about a hundred metres deep. There's a central courtyard area, usually with a few shops, on each level, with houses filling in the areas further away from the central spine of the town. Thinking about it, a spine is actually a good description of the layout of Junction. The town very much resembles the long straight spine, with the discs jutting out. Chee Soon Mei lives about halfway down the spine, some twelve-hundred metres above Sinus Medii. I have my security wait in her level's central courtyard, and walk alone to her apartment.

When Mei answers the door, it's a shock seeing her face. She seems so much older than I remember. Mei must still only be in her early thirties, but she looks at least ten years older than that. I'm sure she could say the same about me, but I've always looked older than I am. I had wrinkles before we even left for the moon.

"I thought you might come, Frank. I guess this means everything that their saying on the news is true," she seems displeased to see me. Or rather, she expects this to be an unpleasant encounter.

"You've been watching the news?" I smile pleasantly at her.

"Come in then," she says begrudgingly.