The Chronicles of Local Space

A fictional exploration of nearby star systems

Serena

Flag of the Serenese Federation (Standard Ensign)
Flag of the Serenese Federation

Planet

More information: Serena

The world of Serena is the closest planet to the sun in the Gliese 832 system. Gliese 832 is a red dwarf sun. Serena is tidally locked to its sun, with one face in perpetual daylight and one face in perpetual night.

Physical Geography

Directions

On a world with the sun fixed in place in the sky, the usual directions of north, south, east and west have little use as cardinal directions, so they are not used. Instead of these directions, the direction of the sun is used as the cardinal direction.

The direction Lux is perceived a little differently to north and south on Earth. When one is at the North Pole, it is not possible to go further north. When the sun is overhead, Lux is considered to be the direction of the Sun so Lux is considered to be straight up at the subsolar point.

Instead of having two poles, Serena can be considered to have as many as six poles. The subsolar point is called the Hot Pole or the Lux Pole, and the antisolar point is the Cold Pole or the Umber Pole. The North Pole and the South Pole are the two rotation poles, which have a colder climate. By extension, the East Pole and the West Pole are used to identify the points on the Equator from where the sun is permanently on the horizon.

Land Masses

The major landmasses:

Political Geography

Map of Centralia and surrounding islands
Map of Centralia and surrounding islands

When Serena was founded in 2891, the population was about 6,000. By the time of the centenary of foundation in 2991, Serena had a population of about 13 million people.

By the end of the thirtieth century, the world of Serena has twelve provinces that were founded as separate colonies.

Most of the population live in eight colonies that are located on the continent of Centralia. These settlements are close to the spaceport. An additional three colonies are located on nearby islands.

Between 50,000 and 60,000 immigrants from Earth arrive each year, along with a few hundred immigrants from other interplanetary colonies.

Afrikapya

Population (2991)641,000
Founded2897

This province is an African province, with Swahili and English the official languages. Most people are from Kenya and other East African countries.

Arabiya

Population (2991)429,000
Founded2907

This province is settled with people of Middle Eastern descent. The official language is Arabic. Islam is practised by the majority of the population, however Arabiya is a secular state that adheres to the freedom of religion provisions of the Federal Constitution.

New China

Population (2991)1,628,000
Founded2897

New China (新中国, literally "New Middle Country", meaning "New China") is a Chinese province, with Chinese place names and the like.

Neue Deutschland

Population (2991)613,000
Founded2914

This province is a German-speaking province on the island of Calida.

Newgeria

Population (2991)840,000
Founded2897

This province is an African province, with most people settling here from Nigeria and other central African countries.

Nirvana

Population (2991)1,022,000
Founded2897

This province is a European province with a significant African minority.

Novaya Russiya

Population (2991)875,000
Founded2913

This province is a Russian-speaking province on the island of Calida.

Nouvelle France

Population (2991)467,000
Founded2905

This province is a French-speaking province.

Rising Sun

Population (2991)1,209,000
Founded2916

This province is home to settlers of Japanese and Korean descent and is located on the island of Lucia.

Terra Nova

Population (2991)594,000
Founded2892

This province is largely made up of people who are descendants of the abandoned colony of New Earth.

Utopia

Population (2991)1,971,000
Founded2891

Utopia is an English-speaking province and has the largest population. The province has a more cosmopolitan mix of people than the other provinces.

When founded in 2891, the territory covered two-thirds of Centralia, in the fertile equatorial belt. The territory was broken up in 2897 into five territories, with Afrikapya, Newgeria, New China and Nirvana being the new territories created by this partition.

Brazilian Mining Claim

Population (2991)88,000
Founded2902

The Brazilian Mining Claim is a mining claim owned by a Brazilian mining company. It is not a part of the Serenese Federation. It is likely that Eldorado will soon be admitted to the Federation as a new province.

Places

Many places of Serena are named for the world of the dead in various mythologies. With a reddish sun illuminating the landscape in a way that is suggestive of fire, such a naming scheme was obvious to the early settlers.

The small cities exhibit many desirable features of modern urban planning. There are many parks, and a lot of land has been set aside as reserves for future development. With the exception of Styx City, the cities are decentralised.

In addition to the main settlements, there are a few small mining settlements scattered around the planet where the resources lie. Unlike the larger settlements, these mining settlements are not separate political entities.

The majority of the land area of the world remains unclaimed, and any nation on Earth can make land claims for settlement. The Federation must ratify all new land claims originating from nations on Earth. Such land claims do not take place very often because Serena is not the first choice for many people seeking to settle on a new world.

Styx City

The capital and largest city of Serena is Styx City, which is located at the mouth of the Styx River. This city has a population of about 350,000 people. The city is best known for its large riverside parks and its boulevards. These parks serve the dual purpose of beautifying the landscape and providing a place where the floodwaters of the Styx River can flow without flooding private property.

The city itself is laid out in a rectangular grid. Thirty-two Streets run from Lux to Umber (they point towards and away from the sun), and sixteen Avenues run from Sinister to Dexter. The streets and avenues are numbered, with First Street the Umbernmost street and First Avenue the Luxernmost avenue. Each city block is 200 metres by 200 metres with the streets and avenues themselves being a generous 50 metres wide.

In addition to the streets and avenues, there is a pair of boulevards that are almost 200 metres wide. Foundation Boulevard runs west to east between Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, and Federation Boulevard runs north to south between Sixteenth Street and Seventeenth Street. Grand Central Interchange is located where these boulevards intersect. These boulevards have a park running down the middle. Under the parks lie two major maglev lines with stations about every 600 metres.

Street numbers in the city grid are artificial, with each 4-metre segment of street receiving its own street number. Thus, each segment of road has 100 street numbers with 50 on each side of the road. It is usually possible to tell without consulting a map where a particular street number lies in the city grid with great accuracy.

Politics

The world of Serena is a federation composed of eleven nations. The Federation is similar to the European Union, with a federal system of government similar to Australia.

Administrator

The Administrator is elected for terms of two Standard years. Federal leaders have a title of Administrator for historical reasons. When the first colony was founded with a population of 6,000 people, the leader was called the Administrator. Over time, the people of the colony saw no need to change, and this inertia became tradition. (This is a similar process to the Mayors of Terminus retaining their titles even when they were leaders of the Galaxy in Asimov’s Foundation series.)

The second in command has the title of Deputy Administrator. The Deputies take charge whenever the Administrator dies in office, resigns, is incapacitated, is off-planet (rarely) and the like. The Deputy’s hold on the leadership may be temporary (as in the case of the Administrator being off-planet) or permanent. If the Deputy attains the leadership because the Administrator will not be resuming that role, Deputies become the Administrator after 28 days.

Parliament

The Government is a Parliamentary Democracy. Elections always take place on the first Monday of the month. Elections are scheduled to take place four years after the previous election. Elections can take place earlier if forced by certain circumstances specified in the Constitution. The Parliament operates under a Westminster-style system with an Opposition. It is bicameral (two houses), with an 88-member House of Representatives and a 44-senator Senate. Members represent electorates that all have roughly the same number of voters, thus they represent the people. The senators represent the eleven provinces of Serena with four senators being chosen in each, so they represent the provinces.

All provinces democratically elect House of Representatives members. The election of members in the House of Representatives is governed by a Federal electoral office. The election of senators is governed by electoral bodies in each provinces, where such bodies exist. Most provinces elect senators, but in Arabiya province the four senators are appointed by the four most powerful families.

Political Parties

The major political parties are the Conservatives, the Socialist Liberals ("Soclibs") and the Environmentalists, which all enjoy broad cross-cultural appeal. The Conservatives and the Soclibs are the parties that usually form governments and oppositions, usually as the major partner in a coalition. The Environmentalists hold a few House of Representative seats and several Senate seats. Some nations have their own political parties that also win some seats. The nation of Arabiya usually elects a few representatives in the Islamic party. The African-descended provinces of Newgeria and Afrikapya usually elect a few representatives in the New Africa Party.

Constitution

The constitution of Serena is composed of a Preamble and nine Articles, which are numbered in Roman numerals from I to IX. Each article may be subdivided into two or more parts, designated Part A, Part B, etc. If an article has only one part, it is not subdivided. The parts are also named, so that the purpose of that part is clear. An article or part may have a preamble that explains the purpose of that article or part. Each part has one or more sections. The sections in each article are numbered starting from 1. A section may have one or more paragraphs. To cite a particular part of the Constitution, it is necessary to cite the article and section, plus the paragraph if applicable. For example, the first section of the Constitution is Article one, section one.

Preamble

The Preamble to the Constitution is a short introduction to the constitution. It contains no legal provisions, but describes the purpose of the constitution.

Article I - Introduction

Article I contains the introductory parts of the constitution. These outline the principles behind the constitution such as the separation of powers. It describes the general format for laws, the jurisdictions that furnish the common law and other such matters. It includes a clause that binds all Federal laws to the constitution.

Article II - The Legislative Branch

This Article describes the makeup of the parliament, its powers and its limits. The House and the Senate are described here. This section also has the conditions that govern when an election can be called.

Article III - The Judicial Branch

This Article describes the makeup of the Federal judiciary.

Article IV - The Executive Branch

This article introduces the office of the Administrator and describes their powers. The powers of the Administrator are largely ceremonial, but the Administrator also has a wide range of reserve powers.

The Administrator is appointed for a two-year term. The right to choose an Administrator rotates among the provinces. (With eleven provinces, each province chooses once every 22 years.) New provinces must wait for all other provinces to choose the Administrator before taking their turn.

The population of the province votes for Administrator. The Administrator ballot must have at least four candidates. All candidates for Administrator must meet the following qualifications:

The candidate with the greatest number of votes becomes the Administrator, and the second-placed candidate becomes Deputy Administrator.

If an Administrator dies, resigns, or becomes permanently incapacitated, the Deputy Administrator takes office within 28 days. If there is no Deputy Administrator, a new election by the same province must be held if the remaining term is six months or more.

During any interregnum, the leader of the Current Province takes the role of Acting Administrator.

Article V - The Provinces

This article describes the provinces, the means by which new provinces can be admitted, and the means by which provinces can secede.

Article VI - Interplanetary Affairs

This Article describes the relationship between the Federation and the several interplanetary jurisdictions, particularly Earth.

Article VII - The Bill of Rights

This Article describes the rights of all citizens of the Federation. The bill of rights is based on the Bill of Rights in the American constitution, with various additional rights. The rights granted under this article of the Constitution are grouped into two Parts:

  1. Personal freedoms
    1. Freedom of assembly.
    2. Freedom of religion, freedom from religion, and the prohibition of establishing a state religion.
    3. Freedom of speech, and freedom of the press to report the truth.
    4. Freedom to petition the Government.
    5. Freedom from discrimination on the grounds of gender, race, genetics, personal beliefs, religion or other like grounds.
  2. Legal rights
    1. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without appropriate process of law.
    2. No person shall be required to bear witness against oneself in legal proceedings.
    3. No person shall be subject to cruel and unusual punishments, nor excessive fines, nor excessive bail.
    4. No person shall be subjected to questioning for any offence without a legal representative for that person being present.
    5. Trials for criminal offences shall be held quickly and shall be open to the public.
    6. All trials shall be held with impartial judges.
    7. No criminal trial shall be held without the accused being made aware of the nature of the charges against them and the nature of all witnesses against them. The accused has the right to present witnesses in their defense.

Article VIII - Miscellaneous Provisions

This article describes such matters as the location of the capital.

Article IX - Altering the Constitution

This section describes the method by which the Constitution can be amended. Amendments require the legislation to complete the following steps:

  1. Either Chamber may introduce a Constitution Amendment Bill.
  2. The Bill must pass in both Chambers.
  3. The Bill must receive the assent of the Administrator.
  4. The Bill is put to the population in a referendum.
  5. The referendum must be passed by an absolute majority of voters in the Federation, and also an absolute majority of the voters in a majority of the provinces.
  6. After passing the referendum, the bill becomes law at the time specified in the bill.

Time units

The planet of Serena is tidally locked to its star, so it has permanent day and night sides. With little need to track natural time movements such as rotation and revolution, the early settlers of Serena adopted the Standard Calendar of Earth and metric time.

The subdivisions of the day are similar to other worlds with decimal time. The day is divided as follows:

One day has a length equal to one Standard Day. One Serenese hour is equal to 57 minutes and 36 seconds.

With perpetual daylight, there is no need for time zones, so the world has a single time zone.

Calendar

With perpetual daylight and a circular orbit, the world has no natural periods of revolution that can be used for a calendar. This world is one of several colony worlds that follow the Standard Calendar of Earth.

Space Travel

The normal way to travel from the surface of Serena to Earth is to take a suborbital flight from the surface of Serena to the base of the space elevator, take the space elevator to the departure lounge, then to take a spacecraft in a transfer orbit to Station East. The journey to space takes about four days, and the transfer orbit to the wormhole takes another 16½ days. The 21-day journey from surface to stargate is one of the longest of all colonies.

The transfer orbit used to travel between the planet and the stargates has the same orbital period as the planet and stargates. This permits a ship to return easily to the planet if this becomes necessary. It also permits a single wormhole to be used for arrivals and departures with all spacecraft moving in the same direction. The journey via the long way round takes 23 days.

Infrastructure

Serena has one space elevator of the low-orbit type and one spaceport. The space elevator orbits the world ten times a day. The counterweight of the space elevator has a small space colony that serves as the departure lounge. Travel to and from space takes place in shielded capsules.

Stargates

This colony system has four links in the stargate network.

Station East

Station East (Beacon Sierra Echo) is a complex of three stargates, mounted together in a large structure and located at the trailing Lagrangian point of Serena’s orbit. Most of the stargates are located here because this stargate complex includes the stargate with the fastest route from Earth.

The main stargate is the Epsilon Indi stargate, Echo One. It is one of of the original wormhole probes, Dandelion 212. This wormhole had its capacity enlarged so ships could travel through it. It is used by spacecraft arriving in the system and is also used as the main commgate because it has a good line of sight to all the colonies in the Serenese Federation.

A subsidiary stargate is the Gliese 783 stargate, Echo Two. This stargate is placed in the same complex as the Epsilon Indi stargate, because this makes it possible to travel to Gliese 783without needing to spend several weeks coasting through the Gliese 832system in a ballistic orbit.

A minor stargate is the Fomalhaut stargate, Echo Three. This stargate was originally known as Dandelion 210 and is one of the original wormhole probes that were shipped to Gliese 832 through normal space. Dandelion 210 is used for the sending of space probes to Fomalhaut.

Station West

Station West (Beacon Sierra Whisky) is a smaller stargate structure consisting of a single stargate, Whisky One. This stargate was installed by shipping the wormhole through Dandelion 212 and then enlarging its capacity. It is located at the leading Lagrangian point of Serena’s orbit. It is used for departures from the Serenese system. It is linked to Gliese 682. The use of multiple stargate structures is mandated by interstellar law because this reduces the chance that a system will lose all its stargates in a single disaster.

History

Precolonisation

The Hygiea Mining Corporation launched four wormhole probes towards Gliese 832 in 2411 as part of a long-term mineral-prospecting plan. Two wormhole probes were lost en route to various causes. Two reached the star in 2680 and reported successfully.

The probes made the unexpected discovery of a habitable life-bearing planet in a close orbit around the star. The discovery was unexpected because the moon was a carbon dioxide/methane world and most of the telescopic searches for habitable life-bearing planets only searched for oxygen worlds. Red dwarf stars were also not believed to be favourable worlds for the development of life. Scientists wanted to study the life on this world, and conservationists wanted to preserve the planet’s ecosystem.

Despite these wishes, the Hygiea Mining Corporation commenced an illegal and covert terraforming project. There was great potential for profit in selling access to a habitable and colonisable world, and with an exclusive claim to the system, the corporation gave in to temptation.

The corporation grew oxygen-producing algae in vast vats at a secret location “in the asteroid belt” (actually in orbit of the planet itself). Then the corporation shipped the algae to the planet and seeded the planet’s biosphere with the algae. By the time this illegal terraforming project was discovered, the process was irreversible and it was too late to save the planet’s biosphere from damage and xenobiological contamination.

In the subsequent criminal and civil proceedings, the board members of the corporation received lengthy prison terms, and three senior executives were executed for their crimes. Other senior personnel stole a habitat ship and fled to Binaria. The corporation itself received the corporate death penalty for crimes against lifeforms. All assets of the corporations were confiscated by the Terrestrial Government and sold.

The rights to the planet itself were bought by another space corporation, Asteroid and Lunar Resources Limited, which sought to preserve as much of the biosphere as possible. However, by this time not much was left that could be saved. Reluctantly, and with the permission of the Terrestrial Government, Asteroid and Lunar Limited completed the terraforming and then constructed a space elevator in orbit around the world so that colonisation could begin.

Postcolonisation

The first colony was founded on September 3, 2891 after the terraforming process was completed and the transit wormhole was opened. This colony was named Utopia, and was founded on the continent of Centralia. This colony claimed territory over about two-thirds of this continent.

The following year, the colony of Terra Nova was created out of a portion of the unclaimed territory of Centralia. It was used to resettle descendants of the abandoned colony of New Earth, who until that time had been living on Mars.

In 2897, Utopia colony was partitioned into five separate colonies. Utopia colony itself became the populated region around the Styx river and the spaceport. The rest of the colony had had little development at the time of partition and it is for this reason that the extra colonies were created. The four new colonies were New China to the south of the Erebus mountain range, and Nirvana, Afrikapya and Newgeria to the north.

In 2902, a Brazilian mining company created the Eldorado Mining Claim with a 99-year lease.

The rest of Centralia was colonized in the next few years, with Nouvelle France being colonized in 2905 and Arabiya in 2907.

With Centralia now fully claimed, colonization turned to the outlying islands, with Calida being the site of the new colonies of Novaya Russiya in 2913 and Neue Deutschland in 2914. In 2916, the Japanese-Korean colony of Rising Sun was founded on Lucia.

The land rush for colonies caused some concern among the long-term residents of Serena, who believed that they should have a say in the creation of colonies. In particular, a few of the existing colonies wanted the right to claim new territory elsewhere on Serena. This movement ultimately led to the creation of the Serenese Federation in 2924.


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