Chapter 5: The Lunarian Dream (Part Two)
8th March
New Singapore Market, New Singapore, Artemis
I arrived at the group of converted apartment blocks that was situated right at the end of the suburb of New Singapore. Since New Singapore itself is the westernmost part of Artemis that is inhabited, this place is the far end of the city.
Colloquially, this place is known as the New Singapore market. It might be called a market, but it's more reminiscent of a shopping mall. Although, no shopping mall would have a hairdresser right next to a strip club. It took me a little bit to think it through, but I realised that having a strip club open before midday would be ordinary here, since some peoples' shift would already have ended for the day. Or rather, their day is already over. It would seem that all the people who were missing off the streets were in here. It's hard to tell, but there's probably at least a thousand people in each of the converted blocks, which I guess shouldn't be that surprising, considering it is the only large marketplace in Artemis.
I do need to go to the hairdresser, but having the strip club right there was slightly off-putting. I've realised why everyone in this city has short hair now. The low gravity makes long hair trail out in a stream behind you. Even though the weight of hair isn't much, it still pulls back on your head a little, not to mention it gets in other peoples' way. It just isn't nice to have long hair on the moon.
I find another hairdresser between a restaurant and a closed laundromat. I guess the laundromat owners aren't on shift. I learn from the hairdresser that many of the businesses here share spaces, as they aren't on shift all the time. For example, this hairdresser is open for ten hours a day, and half an hour after it closes a confectionery shop opens in its' place.
I pay the hairdresser using the digital credit system. On the moon, there isn't any currency. In some parts, the Singapore dollar is used, but the digital credit system is the standard form of currency. No individuals have money, but they rather pay through the corporation they work for. Since there is no currency, businesses can't pay their employees directly, so instead they pay them with the credit system. Employees can buy goods with the credit system using their business' account. Businesses, for their part, can ask their employees to spend less if they spend too much, so as to stop abuse of the system. Not that employees can really refuse. After all, there's no such thing as law on the moon. If you disobey your boss, who knows where you might end up, or what might become of you?
After my haircut, I go for a look around the market. I eat lunch at a Thai restaurant, and I buy some clothes from a retailer. Looking around, I see that everything in Artemis is bright and vibrant. Bright signs, hairstyles, designs, everything. It's almost like a cyberpunk city out of a comic book come to life. Different languages flow and overlap each other throughout the market. English, Chinese, Malay, Korean, German. A truly multicultural city. I realise that it's about one thirty. I have just over an hour to get back to the station. I'm not sure how long it will take me to get back, so I head for the tram.
I get off at Old Settlement on my way back, to have a look around. Most of it has been repurposed by DELOS, but some of the original buildings remain. DELOS took over the warehouses and some of the later habitats, and has since used them as offices for their staff. There is, however, a small collection of round domed habitats that have remained intact. The original settlement of the first twenty colonists. Heroes whose names are remembered just like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Frank Acland (now Scuderi), Li Huang, Chee Soon Mei, Yohn Çiçekler, and all the others. DELOS runs tours through the settlement, but I don't see the need even if I had the time. I, just like everyone else, saw the videos of the early settlement. Months and months of footage of the first people to live on the moon. The moon men. Seeing it from the other side of a television screen is enough for me.
I make my way back to the station with about ten minutes to go. Myself and two others who happened to be on the same tram I picked up from Old Settlement are the last to arrive. The other five plus the lady, I think her name was Jaime, are waiting for us. I can see that I'm not the only one who got a haircut. The three of us join the group. I stand slightly off to the side. After a while, Jaime comes up to me.
"So, how'd you find it?" with that same smile on her face.
I smile back, "exactly like you said. The market was cool, but everything else…"
Jaime laughed, "I thought you might say that. I see you got a haircut too, looks good."
I soon realise that everyone else is looking at the pair of us, like we're lunatics or something. I don't get it. Did we do something weird? Then the low horn of a monorail train that signals its' arrival at a station, sounds out.
"Okay, we're all off now!" Jaime speaks up over the droning noise, "this train is a connector which will take us to Junction, and from there it'll be up to Dunstan. I hope you all enjoyed your time today because from now on you'll be working very hard in your training, and then your job!"
The train ride to Junction was mostly uneventful, just a short forty-minute ride that took us southeast of Artemis. Junction lies right on the edge of the Sinus Medii, literally translated as 'middle bay' which stretches east from the Ocean of Storms. Junction lies in this location, because it allows for trains from all four major regions of settlements to converge in one place. Artemis lies directly to the northwest, of course, but the other settlements are much further away. Stockholm, Iowa, and Apollo lie to the south, Nova California (or Copernicus Montes, as it formerly is known) to the west where the main gold and iron deposits are found, and the Sea of Serenity lies to the north, where the majority of helium-3 extraction takes place. Dunstan, where we are headed, lies to the north near the 'shoreline' of the Sea of Serenity.
Junction is a small settlement of about five hundred people, the majority of which are ethnically Malay Singaporean. Junction was for a time the third largest settlement on the moon for a time, behind Artemis and Dunstan, and as such most of the settlers here have been here for four or five years. Apparently even some of the first twenty live here, Chee Soon Mei, the first person to enter the cavern that would eventually become Artemis, among them.
As we were only going to be in Junction until the train running the North Line, connecting Dunstan to Junction arrived, we didn't leave the station. I suppose there wouldn't be much to look at, even if we did go. I guess even the moon has sleepy countryside towns, just like you'd find throughout much of the Earth. Even though our ride arrived at four, it took time for them to unload the cargo shipments of helium-3 from the train and load them onto the next train to Artemis and the spaceport. We were informed it would take another half an hour before we could board. I left the others on the platform and left to see if there was something I could buy to drink near the entrance.
As it happened, there was a small café there next to the ticket stand and the ATM. After I entered, I ordered a coffee to takeaway and sat at the bar, waiting for it. There were no other customers in the café. Looking around, I saw that the walls appeared to be made of brick, but on closer inspection it became apparent that it was just a textured print. A wallpaper that was ever so slightly three-dimensional, making it look like the wall was really made out of bricks. What other useless stuff will they invent in the future? I notice that the lady making my coffee keeps looking up at a television mounted on the far wall. I look over at it. A worldwide news channel is playing. Just like any other corporation, media outlets had to pay huge to get on the moon, so only the largest are available to play on the moon.
"What's so interesting about the news? All they ever do is dribble on about fake news nowadays anyway," I spoke. I didn't really care, I just wanted her to hurry up and focus on making my coffee.
She smiled awkwardly, "yeah, maybe your right," but she still was looking nervously or perhaps dubiously at the television.
I sighed, regretting speaking up in the first place, "what's it saying?"
"The Chinese government is making claims that Frank Scuderi is working behind the scenes to make the moon independent. They're also saying that he bought advanced military technology off the Israelis. I mean, you're probably right. It isn't like there hasn't been similar stuff before. But these stories always scare me. I mean, I have family back on Earth. If the Terran superstates are opposed to lunar independence, which they always seem to be, and there's a war if this is real… who knows if I'd ever see my family again? So, even if it is just a rumour, it scares me."
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