The doors of the elevator closed as they started to climb up the last two levels of New London. As they moved through the many floors, the view from the crystal front changed to an eagle shot of the city below, with the endless prairies and forests as a backdrop, dotted by countless old ruins, long reclaimed by nature, of what once were the suburbs of London and the towns nearby. In his opinion, the arcology he and Gwen had lived in for the past eight years bore a vague resemblance to a ziggurat.
It was composed of a series of clover shaped platforms of decreasing sizes stacked on top of each other, each with seven lobes and with the platform above rotated relative to the one below so that the lobes on the higher level fell in-between the ones of the lower one. Even though the arcology was only two kilometers in diameter at the base and barely one and a half at the tent and last level, the seven floors of apartments built into the walls of each level allowed it to easily accommodate half a million people while dedicating almost all of its surface area to green spaces.
“Dad, why are we going up?” Gwen asked while throwing a side glance at him, but still facing the glass wall and its late afternoon view. Although she probably wouldn’t admit it, Adam could tell that she was relaxing a bit, getting her mind off the upcoming voyage. “You do know that the loop station is at the lowest level, right?”
“Oh come on. Don’t you want to see the panoramic view from the orchard one last time?” He teasingly asked her before shifting to a more sober tone. “This is the last time we’ll be here, might as well get a good look before leaving.”
Gwen sighed and relaxed her shoulders, then slowly nodded while looking outside through the glass. They silently climbed up the last couple of floors and exited at the top terrace of New London, commonly known as the orchard due to the grove of fruit trees filling the space. It served both as a space for relaxation where people could walk among the trees, and as a communal source of food. The main attraction, though, was the wide view of the surrounding forests and prairies that were visible from the edges.
“Come on, lets walk a lap around the level.” Adam said. They walked around the perimeter of the orchard for half an hour, by which point they arrived next to the western side of the level. From there, a couple of relatively large ruins could be seen in the distance.
“Dad, our city was in that direction right?” She asked while pointing at one further ruins.
“Yes, but we can’t see it from here. Bristol is a little bit further away.” He explained. “These towns have been abandoned for two centuries now, since the mass relocations from the Meltdown. Speaking of which.” He pointed to a spot to the west, where the sun was illuminating a large plume of distorted air, serving as a back-light.
“A plume of carbon dioxide. At the current rate the ecosystem is binding the stuff into organic matter, it will still take two more centuries before it’s all vented out.” She explained. “It’s unbelievable that even now we’ve yet to run out of the stuff. So, Bristol. I don’t remember it very well.”
“You were only five when…” He paused and let out a muted sigh, leaving the sentence unfinished. Eight years later, it was still hard for him to remember that time period when Amanda died. He waved his hand dismissively. “Bristol was one of the last legacies of the old world. It will look like any of these old ruins soon enough.”
Even now the relocations were still ongoing, with the last few remaining towns moving into the arcologies as the higher levels were being completed. As they kept walking, they saw more forests and ruins. At first of small towns to the north, then the ruins of London to the east, an endless jungle of collapsed buildings overgrown by trees and vines. As they were nearing full circle, Adam’s band emitted a soft beeping sound. He felt Gwen get anxious and visibly tense up to his left, which prompted him to let out yet another sigh.
He had already told everyone, that he had the messaging system muted most of the time and to flag the messages as urgent if they needed it to get through immediately. This better be important, he thought. Like one of the arks falling from orbit or a stray anti-matter tanker blowing up in the stratosphere. Flicking his left wrist, the screen on the band lit up and displayed the text message.
Hey Adam,
Got what we talked about, find it in the attachment.
PD: You owe me ten UEG credits.
– Aram Lacroix
Adam shook his head in disbelief, a small smile forming. He had to admit that the brat was good. He placed a hand on Gwen’s shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. Hopefully being part of a small, close community would help her cope with her condition. He’d never admit it, not to her, but this was the main reason they were joining the first wave. She had an irrational fear of text messages and other forms of digital communication, which would be a non-problem five hundred years ago, but nowadays was akin to being some sort of invalid.
According to the doctors, she was on the autism spectrum. She processed the information differently from most people, placing a lot of emphasis on contextual cues to extract droves of additional information from a conversation. While in ancient times she might have been considered a genius of sorts, nowadays this translated to high levels of anxiety when communicating through channels that lacked contextual cues. Text messages were the worst, followed by voice-only calls. Couple that with the constant bombardment of incoming messages from the band, which were an unavoidable piece of the day to day life used for identification, payment and recording in addition to communication, and you got a traumatized teenager with an irrational fear toward alert notifications.
“It was Aram.” He told Gwen while still smiling. “He’s already cracked the CROSS.”
“Already?” She exclaimed, her eyes widening. “Wasn’t it supposed to be impossible to tamper with? It’s just been a week since he boarded the ARK-2! Heck, he doesn’t even know the first thing about bio-chemistry. He’s a programmer for god’s sake!”
“Yup. And that pretty much sums up how I lost ten credits.” Adam said while nodding sagely. “Now let’s get a move on. We’re reaching the elevator again and it’s about time for us to take that loop.”
----------------------------------------
Gwen was thinking of the upcoming voyage as they made their way down the arcology, swapping elevators every two levels until they reached the first level. She didn’t particularly care about the colonization effort, but it wasn’t like she minded living in an ARK either. Her dad on the other hand, wouldn’t shut up about it. He would go on and on about the incredible engineering that was put into the ARKs, the anti-matter generators, the hydrogen collectors, the relativistic plasma engines, the micro-meteorite shielding, and the self-sustaining eco-systems to name a few. Well, to be fair, she was also excited about that last one. This and the biology of HD-164595 d.
But it was painfully obvious to her that all of his spiel was geared more toward trying to convince her than anything else. As to why she wasn’t sure, but she’d decided not to pry. He must have had his reasons for wanting to go on the voyage, and she suspected he was doing it more for her than for himself.
Already at the ground level, they walked toward the center of the arcology, entering its innards through a tunnel and then going further down to the loop station. There, a series of two-person pill-shaped pods were waiting for people to board them, neatly arranged in a row in front of a rotating drum vaguely resembling a giant version of one of those revolvers from before the Great Filter. Gwen and Adam took the first free pod, with her sitting at the front, and the door automatically closed. Then Adam gave the AI indications to head to the newly built arcology of Nairobi.
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A wide smile split Gwen’s face as the pod entered the drum a minute later. She’d only taken the loop a handful of times that she remembered, but the experience had always been mind-blowing. The drum turned on itself, bringing the capsule into the glass tube without breaking its vacuum seal, and then the pod was released, immediately shooting forward in a continuous acceleration.
Ten seconds later they were exiting the arcology, flying at ever increasing speeds slightly above the plains surrounding New London and then in-between the trees of the nearby forests. Ten minutes later, the pod dived down into the ground, exiting barely two seconds later into an underwater view of the canal separating the British Isles from mainland Europe.
“Fuck yeah!” She shouted, manically laughing right afterward.
“Kids.” Her father sighed from behind her.
“Oh come on! Don’t be a spoilsport.” She retorted while grinning like a madwoman. “I read there used to be something similar to that before the Great Filter. They were called rollercoasters, and people rode on them for fun. Even adults, you know?”
“Right.” Adam muttered under his breath. “And some still wonder how the Meltdown came to be.”
In less than ten minutes, the pod emerged on mainland Europe and started turning right toward the south. They spent the next hour crossing the continent at ballistic speeds, arcologies not unlike New London coming in and out of view from time to time. Then they crossed the strait of Gibraltar and made their way south-east, towards the equator and Nairobi.
As they entered the Sahara desert, the appearance of the arcologies started changing. They still followed the same general design, despite those being much newer constructions built on lands that not too long ago were still part of the danger zones created during the Meltdown. What was different was the central pole at their center that extended up for half a kilometer. She knew from school that those were atmospheric condensation towers, but she wasn’t sure how they worked.
“Those are passive atmospheric condensers.” Adam said as if reading her mind. “Although they look like cylinders with a smooth outer surface, if you were to take a closer look you’d see plenty of large holes. It creates a kind of internal tunnel maze that spans the whole tower.”
“The air currents flow through these holes and generate electricity thanks to a piezoelectric coating on the tunnel walls.” He explained in more detail. “This electricity is used to cool down the surfaces of the cavities by means of the thermoelectric effect, which then condense the humidity present in the air. The precipitated water falls down through the tunnels until it reaches the base of the tower.”
“Right. I did know about the holes.” Gwen said, not wanting to sound too ignorant. “They also call them humming monoliths because of the sound they make when the wind goes through them. Which apparently is most of the time.”
“That’s why they make them so tall.” Adam commented.
Soon enough, the desert gave way to sparse forests, followed soon after by dense vegetation. Both of those were young forests, mostly planted during the past twenty-five years and corresponding to the first danger zones, the ones originally created during the Exodus Wars and the last ones to recover from the Meltdown. And then they reached Nairobi, their final destination before leaving for space.
Nairobi was one of the newest arcologies, but at the same time one of the first to be completed, finishing its construction shortly before that of New London. Its construction speed was greatly accelerated due to its self-evident unique feature. Whereas most arcologies sported some kind of garden on its upper level, on this one a thin line could be seen going up from the top, extending seemingly forever until it was lost to the vastness of space.
Nairobi was one of the three arcologies, and the newest one, serving as ground station for the space elevators, with the other two being those of Belem, in South America, and New Borneo, in the Malay Archipielago. The first space elevator to be built, though, was anchored in the middle of the Pacific ocean, constructed half a century before the equatorial continental areas recovered enough to become habitable.
Gwen was slightly disappointed as they made their way up through the chain of elevators to Nairobi's upper level. The arcology, built a quarter of a millennium after New London started its construction, looked almost identical to the latter. Sure, there were some slight material changes. And the levels were completely aligned to the center when compared to New London, mainly to account for the change in latitude. But apart from that the only noticeable difference was the type of plants growing on the terraces.
All of this changed as they reached the upper terrace. The familiar view of the orchard from New London here was replaced by that of a sparse grove of stouter cocoa and coffee plants, with paved roads leading to the center. There stood a large circular building, with two thick bands, five meters in width, shooting up from its center and running parallel all the way up to space. She craned her neck up, squinted and tried to see the end point of the space elevator, but to no avail. Heck, not even the Midpoint spaceport could be seen from here.
“You’re gawking.” Adam said while gently pushing her forward. “Come on, if you’re already impressed your mind will blow up when you see the views going up. Tourist.”
“Hey!” Gwen punched his arm and exclaimed. “Don’t act like you’re used to riding on space elevators. It’s what, your second time going up?”
“Third actually.” He offhandedly commented. “You probably don’t remember, but I went up six years ago for the first time to help install the engines and anti-matter generators of ARK-6. I’ve got to know this stuff if I’m going to lead the engineering team.”
They made their way toward the ground station, a building about fifty meters in diameter with a mixture of concrete and large glass windows covering its facade, and entered it through a pair of doors. The set-up of the station was quite simple. A large waiting area with rows of seats covering half of its surface went all around a walled central area, where one could go in to take the space elevator. Provided that they had a reservation and passed the security check, of course.
They sat down and waited for the following two hours, Gwen getting more and more anxious as time went by. Not because of the trip ahead, though. No, what was getting on her nerves was the constant beeping of message alerts from the people all around her. If was half an hour before their time to embark when she couldn’t take it anymore and rushed to the restrooms. She took deep breaths to calm herself down, then washed her face and repeated the breathing exercise.
“Gwen, are you alright?” She could hear her dad say from outside the girls restroom.
“Yes, sorry for that.” Gwen said.
“Don’t worry, you do you.” He said, as if the matter wasn’t one in the first place. That made her smile and shake her head. She’d had many problems, both with acquittances and friends from school that just couldn’t understand what was wrong with her and were needlessly worrying to no end. Dad? He just didn’t pay it any mind. It was refreshing. “Come on, we’ve got to go through the security checks and board our lift.”
The checks themselves were fast. With all the luggage directly shipped to ARK-6 beforehand and the essentials for the five-day trip already provided by the space elevator, it was just a matter of going through a full body scan and automated medical check, which took a couple of minutes in total. From there they boarded the space elevator, a half-cylinder attached to the tether, ten meters in width and six in depth, with a height of twenty-two meters. It essentially was a moving ten-story building with room for over two hundred people to sleep and eat. A common area was at the front of each floor, with a view to the exterior for the passengers to enjoy.
They entered the elevator and made their way to their quarters, where a bunk bed was at the back and a small table was to the right by the entrance, with a thin glass terminal sitting on top. To the left of the entrance was a low rack with a couple of changes of clothes for each of them.
Gwen shuddered just by thinking of it. A five-day trip with only two changes of clothes and no showers. All in the name of weight reduction. She pushed those thoughts aside for now and made a beeline for the lower bed. She crashed on it, dead tired from staying awake late into the night.
“Come on, don’t sleep just yet.” She was rudely interrupted by her dad shaking her. “You won’t want to miss the entry to orbit in about… one and a half hours.”
“Yes, yes I’ll want to. It’s night time anyway, we won’t see a thing.” She said.
“We’ve moved south-east, remember?” He teasingly said. “Sunrise is in a little over an hour.”
“Damn.” Gwen said, her eyes shooting open.
Over an hour later they, along with ten other people, were waiting at the front of the elevator, looking at the completely dark panoramic view offered by the polarized glass window covering the front of their floor. And then the sun peeked over the horizon, turning the atmosphere into a glowing sky blue ocean that covered everything below. Looking straight ahead, a second horizon could be seen where the atmosphere seemed to fade and give way to the endless black space above.
“For those like me for whom this is the first time, welcome to space.” Said a grinning, slightly overweight middle-aged man from the other side of the floor. This prompted a round of applause and cheers from everyone, which eventually died down and gave way to a more relaxed atmosphere as they kept climbing up and away from Earth, the atmosphere slowly becoming an ever thinning veil covering an ever rounder and smaller planet.