Richard J. Ronayne

Novella

Phenix Publishing Ltd

Nation-X Project

Dozens of my stories are currently being illustrated for release by Phenix Publishing Ltd for their Nation-X project, a multi-year project for 4-8000 word educational novellas.

This series was designed for young adults and high schoolers across Chinese and American schools, harnessing anthropomorphism to help digest mature, dark or joyful topics, whilst reflecting life, and exploring real social issues in an exciting and educational way.

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DySun-X
By Richard Joseph Ronayne

CHAPTER 1: The Icarus Complex
History is told by the energy we use. At first, muscles served as engines, then came fire. The industrial age changed everything before the discovery of atomic power. Each new era of advancement increased civilization’s energy harvest to a scale never seen before.
The age of interstellar expansion had arrived for Nation-X, and Planet-X alone could not provide the sufficient energy increase for this new age to succeed. The sun; the ultimate source of energy, a fusion furnace one hundred quintillion times more powerful than the most efficient nuclear reactor, shone with the power of a trillion nuclear bombs per second. Nation-X committed to harnessing it—not some of it, but all of it.
To do so, the greatest minds of Nation-X had proposed the construction of a DySun sphere, a megastructure that would encompass an entire star to capture its power output. This was akin to the discovery of fire all over again, promising to transition civilization from a planetary species to an interstellar one. It promised to usher in an age of exploration and expansion on a scale barely imaginable.
The scientists had spent decades researching different versions of DySun spheres to find the most efficient. They found that a solid DySun shell enveloping the sun would be too rigid a body, vulnerable to impacts and possibly shattering. It would be liable to drift and be pulled into the sun by its immense gravitational power.
Another variant was a DySun net, a web of cables about the star that could have power or heat collection units strung between the cables. It was possible, but the technology was too complicated to protect the wires against the sun’s gravity.
The design that President White had agreed to begin construction of was a more viable variant, called a DySun swarm; an enormous set of orbiting panels that collected the sun’s power and beamed it elsewhere. Based on physics alone, this was not just possible but easy too. It was such a straightforward process and necessary step for any species to expand beyond their home planet that many astronomers believed there were probably DySun spheres already out there across the universe. Though, they hadn’t spotted any yet.
The sun, being so colossal, would need many satellites to encompass it, though. If each satellite were a square kilometer, the scientists proposed that they would need around thirty quadrillion to surround the sun. They would be built as light as possible and need about one hundred quintillion tons of material. Still, the biggest problem would be the incredible amount of energy required to put the parts together and deliver them to their positions around the sun. On top of all that, permanent infrastructure would be essential to be set up in space to start building.
To get the incomprehensible number of raw materials required for the DySun swarm, President White, with a complicated ethics group, agreed to allow the Nation-X Space Agency, the UNXSA, to disassemble an entire planet. Of all the planets available, the nearest planet to the sun, the metal-rich Planet-M, was the best candidate. Planet-M was a volcanic, poisoned world that suffered horrifically intense temperatures due to its proximity to the sun.
It’s location also meant the construction time would be much shorter. Most importantly, Planet-M had no atmosphere and only about a third of the surface gravity of Planet-X, making it easy and affordable to launch material into space.
The scientists found that conventional solar panels were far too intricate and short-lived. The satellites needed to operate without repairs or intervention for prolonged periods of time, and they needed to be cheap to produce. They eventually decided on gigantic mirrors, which would refocus the sunlight to central collecting stations. To build and launch them efficiently, they needed to be incredibly light, made of little more than polished metal bound to supports.
The increased duration of sunlight on the hellish Planet-M provided all the required energy. Still, it was hazardous to life. Much of the project was automated as possible, and there was no need for people to be sent to the worst place in the solar system. A small crew of controllers was used to oversee the army of autonomous machines doing all the actual work; solar collectors, miners, refiners, and launch equipment.
The solar collectors provided the energy needed to disassemble the planet. They provided the power to run the mining robots to strip-mine the surface of the celestial body and the refiners to extract the valuable elements to fabricate them into swarm satellites.
Rockets would have been too expensive and difficult to deorbit and reuse, so they used a railgun. A long electromagnetic track launched the satellites at high speeds off the planet toward the sun. The swarm satellites were packed tight for launch, only unfurling once in orbit.
From this point, exponential growth was enforced, as the energy of the existing parts of the swarm was used to build more infrastructure on Planet-M and launch new panels with increasing efficiency. Each panel provided the energy to build another, doubling their numbers over and over at increasing speed. Within sixty doubling times, the sun was entirely encompassed by solar panels, all within a decade.
Even as they began collecting one percent of the sun’s energy, it was already an unbelievable change in budget. They had built the infrastructure to create unlimited amounts of energy around the solar system for the next billions of years.
Harnessing the power of the DySun sphere, Nation-X was now able to fully commit to becoming an extraterrestrial society and began the final stage of the project—a DySun ring. This solid structure would encircle the sun at the same distance as Planet-X’s orbit to more efficiently collect the energy and advance as a civilization.
It was built using the last of the materials from Planet-M until there was no evidence that the planet ever existed. It was carefully positioned to avoid the gravitational pull of any of the orbiting planets in the solar system.
These incredible monuments guaranteed the continuation of Nation-X for the next eight billion years until the sun’s lifespan would come near its end or expand to become a red giant. The only thing left to do was to move the entire population of Planet-X to their new home; DySun-X.
 
CHAPTER 2: Interstellar Migration
Ben woke with a headache. He was disoriented and couldn’t bear to open his eyes to the bright light around him. Groaning, he rolled over and snoozed his alarm once more to continue his deep slumber.
Whilst he slept through the rest of the day with his phone on ‘do not disturb’ mode, his friends had been trying to contact him, wondering why he had not met them at the DySun-X ticket stations as they had organized.
“I can’t get hold of him!” cried Mark.
“He’s going to miss his chance to get ahead of the other nine billion people who want to start their new life in paradise,” said Bill.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t miss this opportunity unless he had a good reason,” Monica reassured everyone, hoping for the best. “For all we know, he’s just at a different ticket station with his family.”
The whole group of friends had been waiting in line for hours with all their family’s details so they would receive tickets to leave Planet-X around the same time together.
“I don’t understand why they had to organize this during the winter,” complained Bill. “It was very difficult to get out of bed today.” At this point, Bill’s eyes widened. “Come to think of it, Ben and his family sleep a lot during this time of year. We should check up on them!”
“Quickly, everyone, try to write down all the details of Ben’s family that we know, so we can try to get the tickets for them,” Sam suggested, eager not to leave anyone behind.
It had been announced that the fleet of ships that Nation-X could build would only have the capacity to move a few billion people per return journey. That journey was year-long, which meant that the last billion people would have to wait almost eight years. Nobody wanted to be left behind.
When the group finally arrived at the ticket station, they found that they had to apply for their tickets. While priorities were established to move families together, the tickets were divided between the priority of societal benefit.
This meant that as successful contributors to society, everyone’s families guaranteed they would be on one of the first few journeys; everyone except Sam and Ben’s families, who were much poorer, less educated, and much less beneficial to society. Ben and Sam would be some of the tail-end billion people to be ferried.
“It’s okay,” Sam encouraged the mournful, guilt-ridden group of friends when they met with Ben and woke him up. “We won’t be alone. We’ll have each other. And the rest of you can show us around when we get there.”
That wasn’t enough to rid the rest of them of their guilt. They felt as if they were abandoning their friends, but what could they do? They couldn’t reject their tickets, and they needed to look after their own families.
Over the next two years, after the first few billion citizens had been transported, it was time for them to leave Sam and Ben.
Sam, Ben, and all their families had come to wave goodbye to them, encouraging them to go on and not to worry. With heavy hearts, the group boarded the massive arks and launched into space to do their part in establishing their civilization’s place amongst the stars.
The year-long journey was spent efficiently. They were shown where their new places of work would be and were allowed to choose where they wanted to live on the DySun ring. The new infinitely powered society would be rid of currency altogether as this new way of life would demand new societal rules. Dollars were replaced with credits, a numerical value of your societal worth at that moment in time. There was no need to save money, just a need to actively participate in making the world a better place.
For this to work, practical methods of betterment, such as education, were made free to everyone. Negative impacts on society were removed entirely, such as alcohol, drugs, and unhealthy foods. People were rewarded for looking after themselves and not being a burden on society. This was easier to do when one did not have to pay for energy costs, travel, food, or even gym memberships.
Every citizen was rewarded for doing their best and becoming their best self. If they struggled to move forward or started slipping negatively, they were supported and guided back upward. It sounded like a perfect utopia to the group of friends.
Finally, one year of traveling the stars had passed, and the ark ships landed as one billion people excitedly walked out onto their new home world. Everything was as automated as possible; the technology was leagues ahead of what was being used commonly back on Nation-X.
Cars flew through the sky with automated piloting, as the ground was reserved for walking, running, or cycling only. Everything was kept clean by an army of robots; pollution was non-existent, and everything was powered by only clean electricity.
Everyone was happy, everything was perfect, and the next billion citizens arrived every couple of years from Nation-X, who quickly agreed that DySun-X was a perfect paradise.
Without any contact with those still on Nation-X due to the distance, it was quite easy to forget about them. The citizens of DySun-X woke up every day to give their best for themselves and each other.
The group of friends, though, could not forget that two were still missing, still on Planet-X, with the last billion people. When the penultimate billion arrived, delayed by a year for reasons unknown to the public, the friends began to hear terrible rumors about life back on Planet-X.


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