1043. Lost chapter, 3
(Armylè)
Once upon a very distant time, our coming power had been nicknamed Solaris.
I think it was originally meant as an insult or denunciation, but we made it ours ironically.
Our symbol could be described as a blue sun since its known origin, so that was fitting.
And a long time ago, way before the calendar was rebooted to one or zero by the survivors, our very unique city had been built.
If humanity had had all the time and resources to create its heaven, away from the constraints of time and life on Earth, it was with this isolated city that it got closer to its dream of independence.
Our philosophers often debated whether that had been a futile endeavor. Even if it opened wider possibilities beyond our lonely planet ideally. But history wasn’t easy.
For countless people and unthinkable amounts of materials, the early construction plans, and the early concepts of the city itself even, had been pharaonic megalomania. It rooted inequalities and conflicts for generations, since the earliest ideas for the work. Through the time and conflicts, the divisions around the project and construction eventually diminished. They faded away from us as the city rised with its inhabitants.
It took a generation of endless efforts and technological prowess. Our monument of science-fiction was realized and turned into reality. It was far more than our city.
It was the accomplishment of the greatest prowess humanity could achieve, strong for ten millennia of history and technology. This city was the most marvelous, the most achieved and efficient our species ever conceived.
It made the most of the knowledge and technological resources from every previous urbanization and industrialization project recorded to us. History and computers gave us all the insights to design things perfectly.
Previous smaller scale prototypes around the world had given enough insight for the real work to be successful. And it was. This turned into a city fully autonomous, able to live in limitless autarky.
The pinnacle of technological knowledge and capacity in every possible field of science had been required, but not only. To finance it had been possible only through transformation of the previous world economic system.
All for the purpose of this creation. The old economical system had reached logical limits through history, and showed too clear limitations for a project this ambitious. It wasn’t purposeful any longer for humanity’s ambition. Therefore, to allow humanity to reach these new steps in development, the world’s economic system was transformed into something else.
A new unification beyond monetary values was made, to build a city that would have been considered more rich than any other prior in history.
From its situation, its unlikely underground and above ground architectures, it was an urbanist ideal and work of art. From its amount of technologies embarked, complex and varied enough to reach a point of self-sustainability, it was the forefront and real achievement of industry and technology to its paroxysm.
It was a hard leap from what the world had been able to afford, achieve and unify in the past, and it had been costly to jump for everyone across the planet. Since such transformations weren’t without challenges and even strife, it had been painful at times, and the project had been abundantly berated and insulted over the years by oppositions.
Some would debate how such megalomania of independence never reached before were maybe less a promising achievement for all, and more the reflection of older instincts never overcome, profiting only a very selected few.
I could see both sides.
The city wasn’t bound to be perfect in everything and forever.
Truth be told, even its architecture hadn’t been optimized fully. It had hollow areas, some shady mistakes, fissures and even chasms between some buildings and their underground facilities. Some places were just rough and not well adjusted.
Similarly, its philosophies had been continuously challenged by both the work, its requirements, and its oppositions around the world. Even over the construction site, challenges were endless and daily happenings.
An astounding population spent their life and careers on this titanic building site. Building it, supplying it, defending it, organizing it. The needs were immense and the resources were endless.
The city’s foundations were buried for about a kilometre in height through a very dense rock mesa called Meraneÿs. The city was built over and through that continental inselberg. The roots were deep underground, and the roofs high above the continental plateau. Most cloud levels of the area were passed, making the city generally appear as if floating above them.
The ground was completely artificialized and the city isolated from all uncertainties from both the air around and the ground above. It was a complete isolation from Earth itself, for good.
This city had recycled old plans for space stations and autarchic stations on other planets, moons and asteroids.
It had perfected them, and built it no longer as a prototype, but a fortress. Away from earthly challenges, humanity had left the world for good. We preferred to live in this celestial ship rather than on the old unreliable grounds. There had been some hubris among other ideas possibly.
So the grounds of the city were also designed intelligently. And our species eventually managed to emancipate itself from the needs of a wider uncontrolled environment to new levels.
The sky of the marvelous city was also artificial. That was hard to notice to the naked eye though. Gigantic domes were covering each city sector. They were technologically advanced to allow most things you’d want, mainly remaining perfectly see through to the people living below. They could turn to screens for occasional events and shows, all while hiding the cleaning drones or other maintenance procedures. The sky could be turned entirely artificial and no one would notice.
Obviously the climate was fully controlled as well. Rain and fog would come and go reasonably randomly. Even thunder occasionally. We kept this semblance of chaos from the inner and outside weather, but truly that locked city in the end was entirely mastered and controlled in every little details by its architects and inhabitants. It gave that reassuring feeling of fateful accomplishment at the very least. All was known and controlled, for our happiness.
We had created our little paradise, always good to live in, without frustrations nor unmet needs. It was built to exist and last in autonomy, and it was going to do so for as long as possible.
The storages were more or less what we all would expect when designing it.
We had farms, fields, factories for manufacture or deconstruction and recycling, various cattle, some forests and reservoir biomes. An adage as simple as that nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed; it’s as hard to prove than it is to put into practice at bigger scales.
To other levels of lower ground factories, where materials organic or minerals were either created or decomposed, we made it overall possible. We made something developed enough to waste nothing, and keep a virtuous cycle of life and rebirth of both machines and people reliably. The population was mechanically not allowed to explode of course, but that was easily understood by everyone educated. Growth could never be eternal or a reasonable long term goal in any closed system. We had to find lasting balance, and we did. This marvelous city was able to host safely around ten times the population it ever held, so everything was running smoothly.
In the basement foundations of this unique architecture, everything had been prepared. The fractal maze below was holding everything needed to allow it to last forever. The farms, the industries, the chemicals industries, the reactors, and far more. The particle accelerators were constricted but very powerful. Below the city, all it needed to prosper was gathered and cluttered. All these vital organs were below the surface and skin where grew most habitations. The rock skeleton held everything dear.
Our species had proven its superiority and independence over the older world, when the first children of the completed city were born. They were the first generation free for ever.
And some decades later, there was the other logical event marking this transition. The last inhabitant that had ever seen the outside world, eventually died as well. He was very old then, but he had been young and with everyone before, had contributed his entire life to the construction of this paradise.
To mark the anniversary of this last founder’s passing, the calendar was changed. This new year one was coincidentally matching another one. As our city lost its last founder, just a few days prior all over the rest of the world, it was the cataclysm. Unbeknownst to us, something far wider and violent had occurred.
For us, it was a soft time of changes. Even though like many others, the inhabitants couldn’t quite apprehend the complexity of its meaning and consequences.
More than losing the last one who knew the truth about the outside world, maybe; we felt that we severed for good the past we originated from.
History was finally over.
In a good way, we felt that we had reached the end of times. Now all we would have onward would be everlasting peace, forever.
~
