Moon rise, Moon rose, Moon risen,

Johnny Trueson was a retired wrestler back on Earth. Elected to President of Tycho City on a simple platform of legalized gambling, prostitution, soft drugs and universal wheelchair access. His campaign motto was "Your Home! Your Business!"

He won by a large margin.

And so the years passed, Earth leaning ever further towards a religio-anarcho-oligarchy-superstate and the Moon drifting further and further away in its liberties, free markets, opportunities for individual rewards.

Johnny Trueson hadn't started the trend, but he nurtured it, quietly spread the notion that anyone interested in truly excellent, cutting edge research, sales, or marketing opportunities, had to emigrate to the moon.

Under Earth's gravity, the best ballerinas and ballet dancers retired young; none regretted emigrating to the Moon, where they could nearly dance forever.

Possibly the reason for Trueson's success wasn't his platform at all, that only got him elected.

Possibly it was his community dancing initiative. Rare in history is there a people who love dancing as much as Lunars.

It's difficult to undermine a community which enjoys frequent dancing.

Johnny's greatest triumph?

One day, there was a secret referendum, everyone had the secrecy laws explained to them, all the citizens of the moon were curious, because the customary voting fee (encouraged people to vote conscientiously or not at all) had been waived.

Ballots were cast, ballots were counted, by hand, according to tradition.

Johnny received the results gravely, he nodded. Turned to the large manual by his desk and continued to read it carefully. What he would do was extremely dangerous. Without this manual, he was lost. The builders had clearly anticipated this, the instructions they left were a rosetta stone of formulas, programming languages and pictograms with lots of little yellow numbered (binary) arrows.

At the prearranged time, the miracle happened. The moon woke up.

Secret engines buried under the sea of tranquility activated. They were massive, ancient engines, aeons dormant, only recently discovered and little understood. But they could be understood. Everybody called their creators the 'builders.' Everyone involved with the engines had been working at a burning pitch of excitement for months, sharing the knowledge that this was the greatest mystery humanity had ever encountered.

The referendum results shouldn't have surprised Johnny, he knew his people. Nevertheless he was touched at the level of enthusiasm for his dangerous plan.

So, 6 months ago, President Johnny Trueson, now Captain Trueson, piloted the moon out of earth orbit, strangely, there were no tectonic catastrophes, the tides were unaffected, not even a mild tremor.

Second rate scientists still on Earth hurriedly gave press conferences.

The religio-anarchic-oligarchy of Earth officially declared war on the Moon.

Had Johnny known about it, he'd have laughed.

But the Lunars were already beyond Antares, and the stars themselves their neighbours.

Universum est nostri, read the new Lunar motto.

The universe is ours.