Singularity - Chapter 1: New Washington

Chapter 1: New Washington

Elliot tried to repress a smile as he ran into the flat he shared with his father Bruck and his little sister Cheslie. He ran up the stairs from the front door, and stormed into the kitchen where his dad and sister were chopping vegetables for dinner. He was a tall young man, with dusty brown hair, he was strong, but not muscular. His pants were an inch too short, and his shirt a size too big. He looked awkward, like a young deer fawn just getting used to his legs. This analogy would, of course, be lost on Elliot and his family, since none of them had ever seen an adult deer, much less a fawn. The deer had now been extinct for several hundred years, along with the other major land mammals other than humans.

“Happy birthday, Elliot!” Cheslie blurted. Cheslie was 14 years old, with the same hair as Elliot, only she wore it considerably longer. She was getting quite tall now, was very smart, and absolutely adored her older brother. “You’re 18! That’s exciting!”

Bruck put down his knife and walked over to Elliot, and shook his hand, “Welcome to the adult world, son.”

Elliot immediately gave his dad a hug, and then walked over to Cheslie to hug her too. He picked up a piece of radish and ate it, trying to show indifference towards it, as if it was the most ordinary radish he’d ever eaten. It was, in fact, a very ordinary radish. Red skin, white flesh, grows in the dirt, slightly bitter, very crunchy, in every way, a very ordinary radish. But for some reason, it was the best tasting radish Elliot had ever eaten. He couldn’t contain the excitement anymore. “Dad, Ches, I have a big announcement.” The family gathered around the counter. “I got accepted to New Washington University!” The smile that had been building up behind his teeth burst out with what seemed like an explosion.

“Yay! Congratulations Elliot!” Cheslie was immediately happy for her brother, but slowly her smile faded as she remembered the family’s trip to New Washington four years ago, and how long that took. She started thinking about the fact that Elliot would be far away, and she’d never spent more than a day or two without talking to her brother. Her eyes went to the floor as she wiggled her foot.

Elliot could see that she was upset and walked over to her. He put his arm around her shoulder, “Don’t worry sis, I’ll be home for holidays, and I’ll call you every week. Maybe you can come visit me sometime. With the new bullet rail service across the sea, it wouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours to make the trip.” He looked up at Bruck who was still smiling. “That is, if it’s ok with Dad.”

“Of course that’s ok, Cheslie’s almost 15 now, I think you’re ready for a trip by yourself. But we can figure that all out later. Elliot, this is your day. I’m so proud of you. Your mother would be proud too.” Bruck had pictured this day for years now, and it was harder than he imagined it. Elliot and Cheslie were all he had in the world, and the thought of Elliot heading out on his own was bittersweet to him. It wouldn’t be four years before Cheslie would be out on her own too. They would both get jobs, maybe move to a different city, and Bruck would be left alone in Inner-London. It was times like these that he missed Jenla. She was his soulmate, and they had such plans to spend their lives together, raise a family, and just be happy. But she was gone now, and he had two beautiful children, one of whom was about to head off to college, so he was determined to move on.

Elliot could tell his dad was sad, and knew it was about his mother. Times like these were hard for Bruck. Elliot couldn’t remember much about his mother, just her vague presence when he was very young. He remembered when Mom and Dad went to the hospital, and he was sent to the neighbor’s house. He remembered his dad coming home with Cheslie, and not Mom. He also remembered how sad everyone was. He remembered Dad holding Cheslie and just crying for hours. Over time, things became normal without Mom. The neighbors all talked about her as being a wonderful person. They all spoke of how generous she was, always helpful, always caring, and kind. He also knew that those were just the things people say about the dead. Nobody remembers the bad, only the good. He just remembered her being warm. Elliot always wondered why Bruck never remarried, but he just figured it was because of him and Cheslie. He hoped that once they were both out on their own, Dad might think about finding someone. He could hope at least.

“Well Ches, we should get back to making some dinner for Elliot. Son, go sit down, put your feet up and relax. We’ll let you know when dinner is ready.” Bruck gave Elliot a solid pat on the shoulder, and got back to his vegetables. Cheslie went to the sink and started washing something, but something was bothering her about her Dad.

“Dad, what’s wrong? “

“Oh, nothing, I was just thinking about your mom. She would have been really happy today.”

“What was mom like?”

“She was a lot like you, actually. She loved her family, worried a lot, and always knew when something was wrong. She was beautiful like you too, Cheslie. I’m proud of who you’ve become.” He paused, realizing that all the time he’d spent missing Jenla, he never realized how great his kids had turned out. “How are those berries coming along? Almost ready to make the pie?”

“Yes, Dad, be right there with them.”

* * * * * *

Elliot was in the living room, relaxing, and daydreaming about his future. Elliot had learned about the original Washington DC, and it’s place in history in one of his school classes. Before the Travesty it was once the seat of government for a very powerful country called “The United States of America.” The US, as the country was commonly called, was the most powerful nation in the world shortly before the Great Nuclear War. They had become too proud of their power, and had resisted the admission that Europe was becoming more powerful than they were. Although Europe and the US were never officially at war with each other, it was this tension that had caused the Great Nuclear War.

After the Oil Wars, the great powers of Europe and North America had learned that it was too costly for them to actually fight wars themselves. They decided that the best way to fight wars was to get other smaller countries under their influence, and induce them into fighting the wars for them. It was very effective. The great powers didn’t lose as many lives, but the battles were still fought by proxy, and the desired results achieved. Of course, everything changed when robotic warfare became the standard. At that point, without soldiers fighting the battles, it became easier for attacks on the heavily fortified nations to be carried out. Great tunneling robots or airborne robots were used to execute pinpoint attacks within territories never thought possible. Once this began, the chain reaction was rapid, and the world began its slide into the state it was in that day, as Elliot sat on his couch.

After the end of the wars, and the environmental disasters, collectively called The Travesty, life had become impossible on the surface. Most cities began to build downward. The basements of buildings became entries into the massive tunnel systems that started growing beneath the once great cities, being overrun by heat. Over time, as more and more people retreated to the underground, new tunnels were built. On average, most cities achieved a depth between 2,000 and 5,000 meters below the surface. In some places, those depths got close to 8,000 meters. The balance was to find the spot where the temperature of the earth surrounding the city was neither to cold nor too hot. Care had to be taken to avoid major aquifers or lava flows, or potential lava flows. However, proximity to aquifers was an obvious advantage. Most cities became somewhat complicated systems of tunnels running at odd angles and varying depths.

It was very easy to get lost in a city like Inner-London. The problem was with depth. Elliot’s house was at approximately 2,800 feet below the surface. There were at least 2 layers of city above his house, and more than 10 below. So a person could be heading the right direction, but be a thousand feet too deep. The tunnels wove back and forth, crossing occasionally, or occasionally ending abruptly, sometimes at an Elevator or ladder, sometimes not. Great efforts were made to map the cities, but it was well known that there were corners of the city that very few people knew of, except the packs of miscreants who spent their time there. Elliot remembered a poet who had written about the city of Chicago.

Windy City, where have you gone?

Gone to the depths below the earth.

Gone are the winds, gone are the lakes

Gone with Lower Chicago’s birth.

Grab your children, grab a shovel

Like ants, we’ll tunnel with food to store

Windy City, what have you become?

An earthen anthill, nothing more

Elliot was all too familiar with ants, and other tunneling insects. Of all the creatures of the earth, the tunneling insects were the ones who survived best. At times, it seemed as if Inner London were overrun with ants. Some tunnels and homes were coated with materials to try to prevent the ants from getting in, but they were resourceful, and got in. Elliot thought that the poet got it exactly right, although he had never been to Lower Chicago, he knew exactly what it felt like to live in an anthill. It was stifling for him. He had spent his entire life underground. 18 years, and he had never seen the surface. The truth was, not many people went to the surface. The surface was a dismal place. Nearly devoid of life due to the extreme heat, and the sun’s rays were so powerful that they could burn you almost instantly. The only people who ever went to the surface were the power engineers, going to repair or replace solar arrays. About the only good thing coming from the thinning atmosphere was a great source of solar power, and the surface above cities was blanketed with solar arrays. The power engineers would put on their protective suits, stuffed with frozen gels and cooling devices, and even still could only spend an hour or two on the surface at a time. Elliot’s only experience with the surface was when he would look up through some of the air shafts, and catch sight of a speck of light at the top. And he could watch videos coming in from the cameras mounted on the surface. The cameras themselves were remarkable, able to withstand the extreme weather of the surface. The boiling heat, the torrential, hot rains, which were more than a little acidic, and the fierce winds would be enough to rip normal equipment apart. But these cameras had to be built tough. Their job was to monitor the solar arrays, watch for debris, or other potentially dangerous situations.

Elliot had always felt like mankind was out of place living underground. He read books from before the Travesty, all stories about life on the surface. They took it all for granted. He read about characters running from the rain to find shelter. People complained about the heat of the sun, or worse yet, about the cold of a season called winter. In the northern and southern parts of the globe, ice occurred naturally. Elliot thought they would have seen this all so much differently if they had lived the life he has. Some people were ok with living underground, but Elliot hated it. It was his curiosity that made him wonder what it would be like to breathe clean, fresh air that naturally came from plants, not the stagnant, recirculated air in the cities. Elliot dreamed about running through the fields he had seen in photographs, and read about in books. He would watch the video feeds from the sky cameras and deep space telescopes, wondering whether there was a better place out there for people than this wretched ant-hill called Earth. Inside, he often hated mankind. He hated that they had a perfect planet, capable of sustaining the race for eternity, but unable to control their warlike urges and selfishness for the sake of humanity. It wasn’t until humans saw their own destructive abilities that they finally got together to try to solve the problems, and by then it was too late.

He had these types of thoughts from time to time, and inevitably, it would lead him back the same types of thoughts. He would think about life, death, history, and always would wonder whether there really was anything outside of the Earth, and whether he was just dreaming. He thought about what old Rand Stillson, who lives down the tunnel says about a supreme being out there that controls everything. He wondered whether Rand was right about that, but had doubts. Why would a god allow people to destroy the planet he gave them? Not many people thought like Rand did anymore. It used to be pretty common that people had religions, but since the Travesty, people had sort of moved away from that in the focus for survival. Maybe it was the easy life the surface provided that made that so common Elliot thought. But he decided that sometime, he would have to go talk to Rand about it. He thought he was a sort of eccentric, but maybe hearing the man’s stories would give him a little hope for a brighter future.

All these thoughts brought Elliot back to thinking about New Washington. New Washington was half a world away, and a much bigger city. He remembered the family’s trip there a few years ago. Unlike Inner-London, which was built quickly, in pieces due to increasing need for space, New Washington was built as a fully planned city. The streets were laid out in a pattern of concentric circles, centered around a grand structure called The Capitol. Every fifteen degrees around the circle, a road radiates out away from the center towards the edges of the city. Since the original Washington was built near the ocean, at a relatively low elevation, the new city had to be built further inland. The final site was chosen west of the original city in a high-elevation area known as the Appalachian Mountains. The city began as a massive excavation of a huge cavern. The cavern was round, six kilometers in diameter. The roof of the cavern was built as a massive dome, which was reinforced such that it was self supporting other than a circle of support pillars about one kilometer from the center. From those pillars, the dome opened to a shaft that ran upwards in a slow curve to the south. By the time the shaft emerged at the surface, it was horizontal, and opened in a half-kilometer wide opening in the side of a massive south-facing cliff. That tunnel was lined entirely by highly reflective surfaces, which allowed sunlight that shone into the tunnel to travel all the way down into the city. The light shone through the gap in the dome, onto The Capitol and out through the cavern. It was one of the few cities in the world that could function without 24 hour electric lights.

The city was also one of the few places with open spaces. Most cities, like Inner-London, were simply a series of tunnels, connecting caverns that were converted into buildings. Although there were advantages to the tunnel/cavern construction method, there was nothing quite as remarkable as an open area six kilometers across. Of course, this meant that the city of New Washington filled very fast. Eventually, the main cavern had become full of buildings, and could not support any additional construction. The radial roads had been extended, and the traditional tunnel/cavern construction was used for the extension.

The university at New Washington was widely seen as one of the best universities in the world. Some of the pre-Travesty universities had survived underground, and Oxford, Harvard, and MIT had all remained good universities, but New Washington University was the best. Because it was located in New Washington, they could draw the best minds from around the world. It’s location inside a mountain made it a center for geological studies, and surface science. Tunnels extended outward from New Washington to the surface. The situation of the city meant that the tunnels could extend horizontally, and emerge on the surface near the base of the mountain. This meant that equipment could be transported easily between the city and the surface. Tracks were built with platforms at the emergence of the tunnel. Trains would leave the university and arrive at the platforms several minutes later. The trains could carry students, equipment, and other cargo to the surface for research, and the students could stay protected inside the train while the analysis was done.

It was the surface science that drew Elliot to NWU, specifically atmospheric studies. Since his first Pre-Travesty History class in 3^rd grade, Elliot had been fascinated by the study of planetary atmosphere. He wanted to learn how atmospheres formed, how they deteriorated, and how they could be balanced. He knew there was a balance in the Earth’s atmosphere once, and he hoped there could be once again, under the right conditions. But he had to learn the fundamentals before he could move beyond that. He had to learn how Ozone and CO2 worked together to form the outer layer of the atmosphere that keeps everything inside protected. How light filtered through a thick atmosphere produced the right conditions for plant growth, and safe conditions for human exposure. He wondered how they could ever replace those elements. His thoughts were interrupted by a news bulletin on the radio.

…until next month. Meanwhile, in New Washington, the North American Region Government has announced that they will be starting a space travel program early next year. The program will be the first of its kind post-Travesty. NAR President Zeke Rennet made the announcement from the steps of The Capitol in New Washington. “The purpose of the NAR space program will be to again stretch the limits of mankind, to venture beyond the scarred atmosphere of the planet. Humans once regularly travelled to space for research, communication, even pleasure. If we, as a race, give up our curiosity, we give up that one thing that most makes us human.” No human has travelled to space since the last Mars mission, in the 3^rd year after the start of The Travesty. The NAR is calling the program Artemis, casting the program as in the spirit of the Apollo program from early space exploration times, which landed the first man on the Moon. The initial task of Artemis will be to launch 3 probe satellites. The first will orbit Earth, to determine the condition of any remaining orbital stations, the second will land on the Moon, to determine the status of the Armstrong Moon Base, named after Neil A. Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon. The Final probe’s status is currently classified for security, but speculation is that it may be sent outside the solar system toward neighboring star systems.

“Elliot! Dinner is ready.” Cheslie shouted from the kitchen.

Elliot’s daydreaming would have to wait. For now, it was dinner time, and of all the dinners throughout the year, it was his birthday dinner he looked forward to. He was not disappointed. As he walked into the kitchen, the table was covered in his favorite things. There was a large bowl of asparagus right in front of his plate. Across the table was a dish of beet and radish cole slaw. He saw a large dish of nut and bean loaf, which he was sure would be seasoned with fresh basil and rosemary. There was a golden loaf of cornbread in the center of the table next to a dish of brown rice with peppers and tomatoes. It was the perfect spread. He remembered from his history classes that at one time, people ate animals on special occasions. Birds, pigs, cows, sheep, and other animals were cooked and eaten. Since The Travesty, the idea of eating animals seemed silly. People had learned to supplement their protein needs with beans, and other vegetables. On rare occasions, people ate nuts. Nuts were rare because of the difficulty in growing them. Peanuts were common, but since trees did not grow on the surface, tree nuts were grown at tremendous cost in massive greenhouses near the surface. Luckily for Elliot, today was just such a special occasion.

“Thank you both so much for this meal! It’s absolutely perfect.” Elliot mumbled through a full mouth.

“You’re welcome, Elliot. We do it because we love you.” Bruck said through a wide grin.

“Just wait until you see dessert!” Cheslie said with visible excitement.

“Elliot, there are a few things I would really like to get done before you head to New Washington. We need to clean the water pump again, pressure is getting so low lately. I’m not sure it will do much good though, I think the city is putting too much of a strain on the aquifer with all the growth. I’d also like to replace the old com screen in the living room. If you’re going to be across the world, I want to be able to see your face well when you call home.”

“Sure thing, Dad…Dad, what do you think the future has in store for the planet? Water shortages seem to be more and more common around the world. I have heard that some cities are starting to collapse in Southern Europe. It’s getting hotter under the surface, and the atmosphere seems to be getting thinner every day. Today, I heard that the NAR is starting up a space program, that doesn’t make much sense. I’m worried about the planet, Dad.”

“I’m worried too, Elliot. I don’t have an answer though. I’ve spent my whole life as a rail mechanic. I fix trains, engines, rails, and things like that. I don’t know the first thing about fixing a planet. You are a brilliant young man, and I believe that if anyone can fix it, you can.”

“I hope so, dad.” Elliot finished his dinner, and thoroughly enjoyed the strawberry rhubarb pie Cheslie had made for him. That night, he couldn’t sleep. All he could think of was the Artemis program going on in NAR. He wondered if he would be able to see any of the facilities in New Washington. He was excited about college, but nervous about the future, and what part he would play in that future.