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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Incident On King Street
By Richard Joseph Ronayne

CHAPTER 1: A City in Shackles
Viola Mus, a white-furred mouse, had just finished school and ran out excitedly to be picked up by her father, Reuben. She spotted his black fur through his space suit’s visor in the crowd immediately and bounded up to him to be cuddled and thrown into the air gleefully.
He was careful not to scratch his daughter’s spacesuit in the vacuum of the moon’s nonexistent atmosphere. “Hello, Viola, my darling. How was your day today?” he asked as they began their slow walk home through the low gravity.
Viola had always loved the natural gravity of the moon upon which they lived, and she preferred to bounce her way home on foot whenever possible. It was far better than the moon buggies most others used.
She excitedly explained every minute of her day as she took in the sights of Shackleton City, named after the ancient impact crater which sheltered the city. Viola looked up at the massive concrete skyscrapers, habitat domes, and complex buildings that had been built up in the colony’s one-hundred-year history.
“There it is, darling,” Reuben interrupted, pointing above. She stopped her excited chatter as she gazed up at the blue and green ball in the sky.
“Daddy, what’s it like to live on Planet-X?” she queried as she always did when it was in the visible parts of the orbit.
“It’s beautiful, but so is the moon. The real difference is that Lunarians like us are building a new world, an even better one, while those in Nation-X are stuck with what they have, all the good and all the bad.” Reuben failed to hide his bitterness toward Nation-X.
“Can we go on holiday there?” Viola asked innocently.
“You can discuss it with your mother when we get home, but first, we have to make a small detour today.”
“Where are we going?”
“There’s an important demonstration happening on King Street,” Reuben explained. “I think it would be good for us to show our support. This moon is your home, and now that you’re twelve years old, I think you’re old enough to start learning about the difficulties that your home faces.”
The two approached the large demonstration of hundreds of Lunarians, or ‘Moonies’, as those from Planet-X derogatorily called them.
The crowd was very vocal, all chanting against the recent tax increases that were being enforced by Nation-X. A great tension existed between the thirteen lunar colonies and Nation-X, which heavily taxed the rewards that the colonies worked hard to achieve.
Recently, Nation-X had added extra indirect taxes to materials and items only available from Planet-X. It was the latest attempt in several failed ones of the past to make clear to the Lunarian colonies that they were still part of Nation-X.
The Lunarian colonies were established initially to mine the lunar surface for its abundance of the rare element of helium-three. The gas was used to fuel the fusion reactors on Planet-X that provided limitless energy to the whole world, ridding it of fossil fuels and nuclear waste. The lunar helium-three also powered the advanced fusion engines used to power all spacecraft, which had allowed Nation-X to spread out further into the solar system.
Reuben hoisted Viola onto his shoulders as they stood at the back of the crowd and shouted their support for abolishing the tax propositions. “Boo to tax!” they chanted together.
In response to the heavily increased tensions, Nation-X had sent military police to manage the crowds or intimidate them, as it seemed to Reuben. Several hi-tech geared enforcers stood between the demonstrators and the Governmental House of Customs, where the taxations were being enforced.
All seemed well for some time, and a general feeling of empowerment was instilled within Viola and her father. It felt like they were part of something larger than themselves, making sure that the distant president of Nation-X heard the views of the Lunarians.
Suddenly, the organized chanting of the demonstrators was cut through by a growing noise of anger and aggressiveness. The mood of the crowd was changing.
“It might be time for us to leave. Can you see what’s going on from up there?” Reuben asked Viola, perched atop her vantage point.
“Some men are fighting over there!” she pointed.
Reuben looked on as a young-looking military police officer had somehow been surrounded at the side of the demonstration and was arguing with the crowd on his way to the House of Customs.
The youthful alligator had managed to push his way through the crowd, rifle in hand, inciting anger in the wake of sharing his opinions on the matter. He voiced that ‘Moonies’ are second-rate citizens who should do what Nation-X tells them.
As he left the crowd to make his way into the formation of officers, he was struck from behind with something that knocked him down to the ground.
Reuben watched in horror as the scene played out slowly in front of him. The inexperienced officer checked his suit quickly and stood to his feet, showing a large crack across his space suit’s visor as precious oxygen leaked out. He shouted at the crowd angrily before panickily pointing his weapon and firing.
There was a long pause before the crowd realized what had happened. At that point, several other officers pointed their weapons and fired as well, despite their commander, a gorilla, clearly disapproving.
Suddenly, everyone was screaming and dispersing in desperate directions. Reuben took Viola down from his shoulders and cradled her in his arms to protect her. He held on tight and fought against the panicked stampede.
He saw people crash into each other in their hurry; one fox was trampled, damaging his space suit. Reuben quickly made a decision. He found somewhere safe against a nearby wall to hide Viola. “Stay here!” he commanded and ran back into the crowd.
Viola called out for her father, no longer being able to see him in the wash of bodies fleeing the area. She heard more gunfire, which, although muffled by the low atmosphere and gravity of the moon, echoed a thumping noise.
She scanned the scene in front of her, desperately searching for her father. A large elephant collided with a gorilla nearby. The elephant fell toward Viola, and she managed to jump out of the way just in time.
The elephant rushed to get back up, heading toward her again in his scrambling panic to escape. He was certainly going to crush her.
Reuben jumped out in front and shouted at the elephant to watch where they were going. The elephant grumbled something as he made his way around them.
Reuben called Viola back over to help him carry the trampled fox he had pulled from the crowd. “His oxygen is leaking. I need to share mine with him, but I need your help to carry him. I can’t use up my supply too quickly!”
Viola nodded as she slung the fox’s arm over her shoulder. They exited the area, hearing one more volley of gunfire blast out.
 
CHAPTER 2: Arguments and Avatars
“You did what?” Lorelai Mus shouted at her husband after they had returned home. “You endangered Viola! I told you that I don’t want you to get involved with the demonstrations, and you not only ignore my wish but include our only child!” She helped remove the spacesuit from the oxygen-deprived fox.
“We have to stand up for ourselves, Lorelai!” Reuben argued back. “I want her to be free of Nation-X’s authoritative rule over our home, her home! I did it for her, and I had no way of knowing it would turn out like that. Of course, I wouldn’t have involved her if I had known.”
They had checked Viola over first, making sure that she was ok. She sat nearby, waiting to see if she could be of use as the argument continued until the fox began to wake.
“Thank you,” the fox said, stirring awake.
“What’s your name, friend?” Reuben asked, checking the fox’s responses.
“It’s Tim. Tim Foxe. I work for the news. I was reporting on the Lunarian civil discontent.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “Perhaps I should be reporting on Nation-X’s oppression of the colonists. Either way, I got more of a story than I was prepared for. Thank you for saving me,” he earnestly said.
Reuben frowned. “You don’t seem to be like the others from Nation-X, who treat us as second-class citizens, at best.”
“So I have witnessed,” Tim said with a nod. “I only care about the truth, and the people of Nation-X do not realize how bad things have got here. I must thank you, but I need to get back to my apartment to upload this story before the government controls the narrative.”
Lorelai left Reuben to drive Tim home.
Later, she found Viola watching Tim’s incident report on the metaverse. She sat beside her on the sofa and logged into the feed. She soon appeared behind Viola’s avatar, who was standing in the digital recreation of the incident on King Street.
The family settings had obscured the worst details, but it was still a tragic experience. Twelve dead and ten more injured, the headlines read, floating in the air before them no matter which direction they looked.
“I’m sorry you saw this,” Lorelai said, announcing her presence.
“It wasn’t Dad’s fault,” said Viola. “It was the officer who lost his temper, but the pangolin shouldn’t have thrown the rock at him either. I was glad to be there until that moment.” Viola thought deeply about what she had witnessed.
“I don’t agree with your father in his decision to involve you in the demonstration,” said Lorelai, “but I do agree that you’re old enough to be exposed to more of the world around you. If you have any questions about what happened today, I will answer them without withholding anything in an attempt to protect you.” She put an arm around her daughter.
“Why did this happen, Mom?”
“Oh, darling, maybe it was the officer’s fault. Maybe it was the man who threw the rock. Maybe it is the president of Nation-X, who taxes us too heavily in his desperate attempt to keep control over the lunar helium-three.” Lorelai shook her head. “Maybe it’s our fault for feeling disconnected from where we once came from. It’s hard to tell. The politics of it are so complicated,” she explained honestly.
“Dad explained that it was because the Lunarians feel they are being unfairly treated. What do you think?”
“I think you have to make up your own mind, sweetie. Would it help to understand what happened today if you knew more about the tensions that brought it about?” Lorelai asked.
Viola nodded, clearly struggling to compute why they had come so close to being shot.
“All right then, it’s a long story, so let’s start at the beginning.”
Lorelai pulled up her digital command console and brought Viola with her to a different setting. They stood in a lush green field of grass under an almost clear blue sky with an equal amount of distance between a sprawling concrete city. White foam covered the ocean, and a dense forest lay ahead.
“Before the twelve lunar colonies, a long time ago, there was just Nation-X,” Lorelai began. “World peace existed, but they still had old habits of greediness getting in their way. The Nation-X Space Agency, UNXSA, was regularly denied performing missions that would have saved the planet easily because the rest of the world didn’t believe they could do it.”
Viola’s eye’s widened slightly as she listened attentively.
“They weren’t willing to move funds away from other sectors to take what they deemed to be risky ventures in space,” Lorelai continued. “There was no hunger to achieve space exploration properly because there were not enough people who dared to dream about leaving Planet-X and traveling through the galaxy.” She pointed to the horizon.
Viola looked on as a giant rocket fired off into the sky toward outer space. “But they already had a space station and loads of low orbit satellites? If they had already been there, why did it take them so long to colonize it?”
Lorelai laughed. “You’re exactly right, darling. You see, Nation-X wasn’t run by scientists. It was run by politicians and wealthy individuals in the early twenty-first century—not enough of whom listened to the scientists. They didn’t realize that they could already begin building a moon base. The UNXSA knew that they had the technology to do so, but there was too little interest, too little imagination.”
Lorelai paused and looked up. “In the year twenty-twenty-two, the estimates from UNXSA and the private sector clearly showed that it could be done for twenty to forty billion dollars, spread out over about a decade. The price is comparable to the Planet-X Space Station or the budget surplus of Midland that year—not that big an investment, really, when the payoff would be immeasurable.”
Viola listened to her mother with barely a blink. She tried hard to process all the information.
“They just couldn’t imagine how the Moon could be used as a sandbox to develop new technologies and exploit unlimited resources,” Lorelai continued to explain. “They couldn’t truly realize the important abundance of helium-three for fusion power, which would end pollution, world hunger, homelessness, and accelerate the rate of societal and technological advances. It laid the foundation for us to spread out into the solar system and beyond.”
“That’s so sad,” said Viola. “Why wouldn’t they want to do it, though, especially when they were destroying the climate?” Puzzled, she furrowed her brows in disbelief.
Lorelai nodded in response. “Well, sadly, the bottom line is that it’s hard to get governments interested in long-term investments in the future of civilization. They did, however, eventually send a mission to the moon, though it had to be heavily funded by private space agencies.”
She turned to face her daughter. “But what’s happening politically now has always happened throughout history, where colonization occurred in phases. In the first phase of the age of exploration of Planet-X, for example, tribal monarchs funded expeditions to chart, discover, and to stake their claims. They planted a flag and set up a camp, but they didn’t stay.
“In the second phase, small missions set up outposts, and settlements were founded, which were still very dependent on their home countries for supplies. Some failed, but others survived and established a permanent presence.
“Only then, in the third phase, did a true colony form to which tradesmen and laborers could emigrate, creating new wealth and opportunities for themselves and their families, sending extreme wealth back to their countries of origin.”
Viola nodded slowly, making it evident to her mother that she was keeping up.
“When we colonized the moon, we went through the same three phases,” said Lorelai. “We found that the moon was not a welcoming place for living things. A moon day lasts twenty-nine days with a difference of almost three hundred degrees celsius between sunlight and shade. There’s no atmosphere to shield us from meteorites or cosmic radiation. Worse still, the lunar surface is covered in a layer of nasty scratchy dust.”
At this point, Lorelai’s tone changed. She seemed somewhat proud.
“Despite all that, as always happens throughout history, a brave few made it happen.”


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