Exposition! And, wow, a joke! It’s a depressingly morbid joke, but still.
Repository 7, Section 21, Subsection D
(Just outside Dōnglǘ Shèngmǔ Base)
The Chinese, Europeans, and Americans had all built their national bases so close to each other to make walking from one to the other a mildly desperate move, instead of a creative way to commit suicide. This had always confused first-timers, since those three factions hadn’t been all that friendly to each other back on Earth, but they soon learned better. The Moon hadn’t been exactly safe even in the good old days. The bases’ relatively close proximity to each other had saved lives.
There was even a kludged-together triangular monorail connecting the three bases. It had been finished years before the end of the world, and never mind that it had had no official sanction whatsoever. It worked, but it was a kludged-together monstrosity, and these days there wasn’t enough traffic to justify regular use. Tobias couldn’t remember the last time there had been actual in-person traffic, although admittedly he would have only heard about that sort of thing if something had tried to eat the passengers. From what he could tell from the crawler drone, the track was clear from obstructions, so probably something like that hadn’t happened recently.
Abby had joined him in the control room to monitor the drone’s progress. “It’s a shame there’s no atmosphere,” she observed. “A prop drone would’ve been faster.”
“Yeah, Abby,” agreed Tobias. “But why stop there? Just imagine what we could do here if we had a breathable atmosphere, magnetic shield, and unfrozen water everywhere!”