Will Hawkins

A point of military protocol, Q. When speaking to an officer or non-commissioned officer it is perfectly proper to use their basic rank only. For example, the Lt. Commander in the story would be addressed as Commander and the Staff Sergeant as Sergeant. To address the young man as 'Master' while perfectly correct seems a little fatuous. He might better be addressed by his given name, 'Mitchell' or even by a nickname, 'Mitch".

Whispering is NOT a good way to communicate quietly as the 'S' sound will carry. Just listen to people praying in church - all you can hear is 'sssssss'. If you wish to whisper, speak with a lisp. That silences the 'S' sounds quite well even though does sound funny.

Yes, English English came first and only in America have we cut a lot of the interesting spellings out of the lexicon. I am perfectly happy with English spellings, so I never even mention them in comments. You will please notice that I did not mention the American attitude of 'driving on the wrong side of the road.' Fully one-third of all the drivers in the world drive on the left, so not all those drivers can be wrong. Now that I am living in Brazil, I am even getting used to meters and kilometers as well, though the temperature expressed in Celcius gives me a bit of mental pause. Those, here in Brazil are not as much of a problem as, this time of year, 30℃ is a very common daytime high temperature and my old bones like that a lot. Now that is something the English did not do. Celsius was a Swedish Astronomer, so we are both suffering from the same event.

Okay, I think that the UN is playing 'musical chairs' as far as the relocation of its offices is concerned. Let's look at the next book and decide where Quokka is taking us. At the least, it promises to be interesting!

The American aircraft carrier is now following a course parallel to the boundary of the exclusion zone. That means that planes taking off from the carrier could cross the line into the exclusion zone in just minutes. I think it is very dangerous for a Canadian submarine to be cruising within seven miles of an unfriendly carrier, and can only hope that nobody receives orders to make a sudden turn!

Oh, come on guys, the USAF is obviously creating an 'incident' to legitimize returning fire 'hot'. This is just the opening salvo in a war. The only problem I can see for the US is firing on Canadian Nationals. There would be no problem firing on Sahndrol aircraft as they are not recognized by the US as a friendly power.

Lot's of luck, guys. I have a strong feeling that the US government is not going to like anybody, friendly or not, claiming islands in the Carribean Ocean. The US will feel, I am sure, that ocean is their private pond because of its closeness to the mainland US. We fought a war once over the ownership of lands in the US duck pond. The Spanish-American War, though ostensibly fought over, among other things, the freedom of the Carribean Island of Cuba as triggered by the sinking of an American Battleship ("Remember the Maine") moored in Havana harbor, ended up with the expulsion of a European power, Spain, from the Carribean and the acquisition of large areas of land (Costa Rica and the Phillipean Islands, Guam and others) by the US. Note: that while the first studies of the cause of the sinking of the battleship Maine blamed an external mine triggered by an unknown means, subsquent and more accurate studies confirmed that a fire caused by spontaneous combustion in the coal in a neighboring hold triggered an ammunition explosion.

Getting the new space complex construction out of the US is an excellent idea. Not only may it reduce the visa requirements, but it also removes one leg for the US to claim ownership. In the light of hindsight, looking at the political situation in the US as of this year, 2018, that is probably the best thing that could happen. I am constantly embarrassed by the reactions of my government to world events.

I will echo the suggestion made by several commentators about editing and beta readers. I have never found fault with the 'Queen's English' as a matter of fact, I most frequently find that the English used by the Brits on GA to be much better than mine. The situations delineated by the author, Q are the same sorts of arguments that have been going on in the UN ever since its founding. I do not feel that they will be solved in four days, or as argumentative and self-concerned as the representatives are, in four hundred days.

While I am not surprised that the UK and the US representatives to the UN could agree on a conference, I do not see the big fat US agreeing to anything limiting their power on the moon or any other place. I believe the six-power talks will immediately bog down in bickering and disagreement with the US acting like a schoolyard bully.

Representatives of each of the major powers on Earth should be reminded that, at this time, nobody owns property on the moon and any occupation by a station of an Earth power must be handled in a fashion similar to those occupancies in Antartica, but including areas designated either one for each Earth country or for each member of the UN with no distinction between ordinary members and permanent members. That will rub the cat's fur in the wrong direction! Hey, Q, your grammar shows improvement in just the chapters I have read so far. I hope that signals paying more attention to details, but in any case, it has smoothed out the story-line greatly. Congratulations.

Well, we now mark a successful completion of an arduous selection task.

My head hurts at the thought of vetting all those candidates.

"They thought they knew better than the ambassadors of the URP", that is such a typical reaction for the personnel of security in the US, it just serves to highlight the ass-hole-ness of ICE and Homeland Security of this country! ( ICE = U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.)

This action by Homeland Security in the US is so typical of US bureaucracy. My partner, Jose, a citizen of a 'friendly' country. Portugal was denied admittance to the US on the basis that he had entered and departed from the US, 'too many times'. Fortunately, since that time, he has been able to enter and depart several times from Brazil, but if he is unable to book a direct flight from Portugal to Sao Paulo, Brazil for some reason, he has had to fly into Canada as he is now on a 'no-fly' list for the US.

Hey Q, I would like to make a suggestion, and it is a suggestion only, that when this story is edited for publication as a novel that the word 'warp' be substituted for 'rip' only because most English speakers have become used to the expression 'time warp' and it does not carry the more destructive connotation that 'rip' does. I think the introduction of the visitors to schools is a neat idea. It is those young men and women who are going to carry on the research and negotiations with the visitors over the next few years. I am still excited about reading this story, keep up the good work, Q.

Once again I advise: slow down, Mate, you are trying to do in 3-4 chapters that which should stretch over twice as many. I say this, not because as a reader, I do not understand what you are saying, but you are trying to do a whole book in a limited number of chapters. It is interesting that people from other solar systems are setting up colonies on the moons of Earth planets, but that Earth has not yet established a colony on its own moon. We are creating an us-them situation which, knowing the insular psychology of Earthlings is fertile ground for conflict. Study the colonization of Brazil for example -- Portugal started it out but they felt they had to clean out several other European colonizers along the way, the Spanish, Dutch, English, and French for example. It is just not in human nature to accept competition for such a rare resource as habitable land!

The editing was better in this chapter, Q, as was the pacing. Just a little more work on those things and you are right there. Keep up the good work.

Hey, Q, there are a couple of criticisms in the comments area that are worthwhile paying attention to. But, in general, except for the upset about speaking English, most of them are about too rapid a pace. If you straighten out the upset about English, slowing the pace ould merely call for more detail, a little more description of personality and surroundings might be enough, but not too much as yak-yak can get boring. I know you can do it, Mate.

I will have to agree with Potter about the jarring and unfocussed progress of the narrative. I have read other stories by you Q an found them well edited, so the slippage in this one is somewhat jarring. In addition, there are a few grammatical errors, spelling and verb tenses for example. However, the creativity of your authoring is evident. Please do not try to undertake both the authoring and the editing yourself. Expend your time and energy on what you do best, creative writing. Let someone with a fresh eye undertake the editing. By the way, I know you are Australian. Don't worry if a few Aussie expressions creep into your writing. Even here in the US, we readers are familiar with many Aussie words and colloquialisms and if we run into one we don't understand, there are OZ - US websites to help us out. Relax, do what you do best which is creative writing and let the editor take care of grammatical problems, and I'll shout to split a slab with ya.

In a situation like this, it is always the mediator who is placed at the greatest risk. Good luck to Lucas and take care.

Because I am now, 2018, familiar with the results of the latest presidential election, I have to be careful in any comments I may make about politics at this point. I have been chastised by GA administrators for commenting in some location and in some manner other than the approved one on political matters. So I will say only that I am concerned about the reaction of a significant portion of the electorate at this point now two years after the election.

Finally, there is someone in Dorian's life that has his interests at least partly in mind. His new roommate seems to be a winner and much of the conflict with the school administration especially the bitch in the housing office, seems to be taken care of.

My bad - I failed to check on the extent of Secret Service protection for major political candidates - Candidate and Spouse only is the law, and it was not until 1901 that Pinkerton was replaced by Secret Service personnel. So Ronyx is much more thorough than am I in checking background information.

Goober (or more properly, goober pea) - as far back as the Civil War in a South suffering from the Yankee blockade of her ports, food was in short supply. A Southern farmer by the name of Goober discovered that peanuts were an acceptable replacement as a vegetable, especially when boiled, so boiled peanuts came to be called Goober Peas and given a place in the Southern diet. At ballparks in the South, they are available as snack food even today. If the Senator is confirmed as a Vice Presidential candidate, there will be an additional level of problems for Dorian. The Secret Service guards will show up and start escorting him everywhere he goes. This is "protection" offered to every Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate and their family members by law ever since the Pinkerton Agency (later replaced by the Secret Service) was given the job after the assassination of Lincoln. Those boys are professionals and you do not f=ck with them!