Luna
By Charles
America may have been the first to go to Earth’s moon, but it was the AI Council who first colonized our nearest neighbor. China quickly responded by saying that no mere machines could colonize anything and claimed Luna with their own colony. We followed with a colony of our own to dispute the claim, and so matters have held ever since. China accuses us of being disrespectful barbarians to the claims of the oldest and greatest empire of all human history. And we challenge them to show us where exactly that mythical empire exists, because we cannot find it anywhere. It is a war of mocking words and steely gazes, but the Lunar Treaties forbid us from exchanging more lethal ordinance inside Luna’s orbit. Thank God for that.
Every nation on Earth has built some base or colony on Earth’s moon. Luna was our gateway to the Solar System in the early days of space travel, and we all stopped there on our way into void. And the things we learned on Luna we took to the other planets and moons orbiting our sun. We all claimed her but we all learned to live and let live. We have kept the peace on Luna for centuries. Even during The War our soldiers watched each other from across their respective borders and waved at each other. Luna is our oldest colony, you see. They have not forgotten that survival can depend far more on the person a few steps away than anyone at the bottom of a gravity well on the far side of a black and cold gulf of space. They are Lunarians, first and foremost.
Eagle City
By Charles
Everyone who has been to Luna knows about Eagle City. If you came from a Western Alliance nation, it is probably where you landed, and many never leave the city at all. One of the oldest and largest metropolises on Luna hosts nearly everything visiting tourists from Earth want to see, after all. It is the farthest from home most of those born on Earth have ever traveled. The only truly alien landscape they have seen with their own eyes. Eagle City. The capital of Luna. The American portions thereof, at least.
Eagle City was originally founded in the Sea of Tranquility near where the Americans landed Apollo 11 in the 1900s. The first military garrison over a century later simply called it Eagle Base in honor of the Lunar Lander, and the name stuck. The first civilian colonists named it Eagle Dome, and later waves called it Eagle Colony as they built more domes on the surface or dug deep into the Lunar rock. It became Eagle City in the 2100s as it stretched its reach throughout the Sea of Tranquility. And then they made it a sea in fact and not merely in name.
Eagle City has been the capital of the American portions of Luna for centuries. Surrounded by the barren Sea of Tranquility, it was built from pressure domes and underground caves keeping the void of space at bay. Then the Peloran made Contact and gave us gravtech. Many people saw the military applications of that technology, but the mayor of Eagle City had something far more interesting in mind. She wanted to make it possible for mankind to walk atop the surface of Earth’s nearest neighbor without pressure suits for the first time in history. She wanted to build Luna’s first open world sea. The culmination of her project changed life on Luna forever.
Eagle City was America’s largest and most advanced metroplex on Luna when the Peloran made Contact. But the possibilities of alien gravtech made it look quaint and antiquated by comparison. So the city mayor contacted the Peloran with a proposal to make use of their gravplating in a way that everybody could marvel at. The Peloran jumped at the proposal of a peaceful use for their technology and began fabricating all the gravplates Eagle City needed. That is how Eagle City built a small lake on the surface of Luna. That is how it turned Molke Crater into a Molke Lake worthy of the name. The new Eagle City enjoyed a full one gee of gravity throughout its tunnels and domes, and even the open surface became a shirtsleeve environment for anyone who wished to walk in open-air parks to the sound of lapping water beneath the stars.
It took years, decades even, to turn the Sea of Tranquility into a true sea of water that would not boil off. Many consider it one of the Seven Wonders of the Solar System. Many bemoan the resources spent into bringing a sea to life on barren Luna. But neither the Peloran nor the mayor of Eagle City ever considered it a truly economically feasible undertaking. It was a statement piece. A proclamation that even barren Luna could be brought to life. And a powerful statement it was. People born on Earth today do not remember a time when the pale blue Sea of Tranquility was not visible to the naked eye on Earth. But those who watched it bring the color of life to Luna will never forget that simple statement of the power of gravtech.
Eagle City’s plan to turn the Sea of Tranquility into a true waterway on Luna hinged on gravplating and energy shielding. They needed gravplates to keep the water in place and make a comfortable one gee boating and walking environment. They needed the energy shielding to protect the Lunar surface from Solar radiation and make it safe to walk beneath the stars. Mass production of those two technologies created entirely new industries on Earth and beyond, perfected them for both military and civilian deployment, and allowed Eagle City to expand the new sea as a visible proof of what we could build when we wanted to. One cannot underestimate how much the Sea of Tranquility Project did to change life in the stars for all of us. It showed us that we could create new life on even the most inhospitable worlds, and that was a game changer.
Thousands of years of human civilizations have looked up in the sky to see Luna in grey scale. It was a barren and airless landscape. Lifeless and desolate. It held no atmosphere or radiation fields to protect anything on the surface. Our first colonies were little better than space ships anchored to the surface, or tunnels bored into the ground. But everything changed after the Peloran made Contact. Their gravtech allowed Eagle City to turn the Sea of Tranquility into a true sea that we could see from Earth. I watched it happen with my own eyes. Night by night. Month by month. Year by year. I watched it grow in the sky above me, spreading out until it filled the entire Sea of Tranquility with water. Never underestimate how fundamentally that changed our worlds forever.