25 The Order of Tomorrow - Part I

12th March

Staghead, Artemis, Freehold territory

The last few days have been rather hectic. I don't think I've had more than a few hours' rest at a time since we left Dunstan. When we caught the train back to Junction, I was surprised at the number of people. There must've been almost a thousand people trying to get a ticket. It was crazy. DELOS even had to send an extra train down the rail to seat everyone. I hadn't really realised that it was such a big deal, but it seems this Justice Association that Jaime is a part of really holds quite a lot of influence. When I asked her about it, Jaime shrugged and said that they really weren't that big, just that word spreads fast on the moon. I suppose that makes sense given the settlements are all reliant on each other, and within the settlements themselves space is limited. All this probably makes the Lunarians tight knit, and allows for news to spread fast all over the moon.

Once we arrived in Artemis, me and Jaime were assigned temporary accommodation in one of the empty lunarscrapers located between Diana and Chinatown. The area was beginning to be referred to as Staghead. No one knows who named it that, but apparently it comes from the shape of the lava tube Artemis is located in. If you look at it on a map, it looks like a stag's head. Since this area is right around where the centre of the head would be, it's been given the colloquial name Staghead. Jacob and Jaime both reckon they can see it, you just have to squint at the map, but personally, I can't.

After we dropped our stuff off in the apartment, Jacob and Tobio are in the apartment across from us, we headed to the Old Settlement to help with the organisation of the protest. Myself, Jacob, and Tobio, helped with the construction of the temporary stage, and Jaime was involved in organising the order of speakers, and crowd control. When we got back to the apartment the night before the protest, she was gloating about how she'd gotten to meet Chee Soon Mei. That seemed amazing to me. The first twenty seemed almost like mythical figures to me, but both Jacob and Tobio were unimpressed. Everyone on the moon has met at least one of them, Tobio explained brusquely. Li Huang and Zhen Su Tai both live in Dunstan, after all. That surprised me at first, but then the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. The first twenty had mostly spread out across the moon after the construction of Artemis was complete, and plenty of them were community leaders and the like. In the small, compact environment of the lunar settlements, of course everyone would have met at least one of them.

The day of the protest was even crazier than the days that had preceded it. During the first shift, the crowd grew from a few hundred to perhaps ten thousand in the space of a couple of hours. The crowd grew far larger than its' anticipated size, and spilled out of the Old Settlement and into the streets of Diana and Yttrium Valley. I was allowed onto the stage as Jaime's aide (she said she would rather have me than Tobio or Jacob), which gave me a freat view of the crowd and the lunarscrapers towering above them. From the stage, you could look straight down Yttrium Valley, through a gap in the lunarscrapers. You can even see the rise of the ramp that climbs the cavern wall at the far end, up toward the train station.

Being seated up on the stage, however, I was perfectly positioned to see Frank Scuderi walk onto the stage. I thought my eyes were tricking me at first, but there is no way anyone on the moon wouldn't recognise the face of the foremost among the first twenty. Even if he is now older, grayer, and gaunt. His dark green suit seems out of place below his wrinkled face and streaks of grey in his hair. Me and Jaime, as well as everyone else there, were stunned to see him there. He was, after all, the epitome of who we thought the enemy was. And then his speech, left all of us, well... speechless. I, who wasn't the most informed of lunar politics, turned to Jaime for answers, but I could tell she was just as confounded as me.

And even after the protest ended, all anyone could talk about was Frank Scuderi's speech. Lunar independence: but was that even possible? Could it ever successfully be pulled off? Surely, the moon is too reliant on the Earth for any independent movement to be successful. And how does this affect me? Do I want to stay on the moon? What will happen to me if I decide to stay? Will I ever see my family again, if the moon becomes isolated under Frank Scuderi, or occupied by military forces from the Earth? Perhaps I should decide to go back to the Earth right now. But for some reason, that doesn't feel like the right choice. I wonder why. Is there some reason for why I feel like I need to stay on the moon? I can't think of any.

After we got back to the apartment, the two of us collapsed almost immediately onto the couch. We both just lay there for a couple of minutes. It was kind of awkward, but both of us were too lazy or tired to get up.

"Hey, I was wondering..." I started.

"What?"

"...why don't they have lunarscrapers in Dunstan?"

"What's a lunarscraper?"

"Oh... that's what I call the city blocks they have here."

"Lunarscraper... oh, I get it. That's probably because they never expected Dunstan to be as large as it is today. It was supposed to be a small settlement like the other ones on the Sea of Serenity, so they never built... lunarscrapers."

"I see," I say thoughtfully. I suppose that makes sense. It had just been bothering me a litte, since there was definitely enough room in Dunstan to construct lunarscrapers, perhaps even taller than the ones in Artemis, but there just aren't any. The two of us sat in silence for a while. It just takes too much of the energy we don't have, to talk.

"Maria, I was wondering..." Jaime started.

"What?"

"...would you happen to know Frank Scuderi's age?"

"Hmm, I thought he was relatively young from what I remember of the old footage of the first twenty..."

"Right?"

"...but he looks a lot older now... I'm pretty sure he's a post-millenial."

"Post-millenial?"

"Someone born after the year 2000," I reply.

"I see."

Once again, we lay back on the couch in silence. I feel like it would be bad if I fall asleep here. I have to catch a train back up to Dunstan, and then report for work tomorrow second shift. I should start packing already. I groan, as I roll myself off the couch, then pull myself to my feet. It might just be me, but that felt like it was harder to do that just now, than it was a few days ago. I must already be losing muscle mass, from the low gravity.

"Would you like me to make you some coffee?" I ask Jaime, who remains sprawled out on the couch.

"Please," she says, as she stretches further to cover the area I was lying in.