Microstory 2452: Coraldome

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This dome is categorized under multiple categories, but you wouldn’t know it by finding it in one of the categories, and opening its prospectus. It’s a little nitpicky, but I just happened to notice that it shows up when you change filters. It’s unclear how many domes are multicategorical, which I guess just bothers me on principle? I know, that’s not really what we’re talking about here, but you can’t provide public feedback on the catalog itself, and I just felt like this was something that other people should know. Okay, I’ll get back to it, and I promise that it won’t be negative moving forward, and that’s because Coraldome is a beautiful place. After looking through all the category filters, I was able to determine that this dome is Residential, Leisure, Ecological, Research & Development, and Institutional. You can live here, if you find an apartment that strikes your fancy, or have a temporary stay at Korallion Hotel. Whether you’re here for long-term exploration, or a one-day visit, there’s a lot to see, and a lot to learn. Life on Earth began through a process known as abiogenesis in the ocean, specifically in hydrothermal vents. It evolved from there, organisms multiplying, taking in energy from their environment, responding to stimuli. They mutated, adapted, filled ecological niches. They transformed into independent species, gained new traits, and eventually left the waters, growing new limbs, and reaching for the sky. But some stayed in the water. Most of them, indeed. Earth’s biosphere is perfectly tailored for the life that evolved there, because any life that wasn’t suited for survival...didn’t. And it still doesn’t. Castlebourne is a different place. You can stick as many domes on it as you want. You can pump air in here, and salt the water with minerals. You can warm it up and cool it down, but it will never be Earth. It will never be our origin. Still, we like life, and our biological imperative demands that we make it. Humans are unique in that we are compelled to make and preserve other species besides our own. Whether it benefits ourselves or not, we want it to live. It’s why we consolidated our population into centralized spaces on Earth, and why we left. It’s why we settled on barren worlds, including Castlebourne; because it didn’t require us to destroy life. When you come to Coraldome, you’ll be met with a community of organisms of all varieties, imported from Earth via digital DNA. They live here now, genetically altered to survive in Castlebourne’s unique ecosystems. We may call it a clownfish, but it’s not the same clownfish that you may find off the coast of Australia. It’s a Castlebourne clownfish, because the composition of the water is different, as is the gravity. The other plants and animals are different too, which impacts how they interact with each other. You could know everything about the biosphere back home, but you’ll have to relearn everything if you come here, and Coraldome is the perfect place to do it. The fish swim all around you, right up to the glass, on multiple levels. It’s my favorite place in the world. This world anyway. Nothing will ever be better than Earth; where it all began. See? I told you that I would start being positive.

Microstory 2416: Mountain Mountain

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Mountain Mountain. So nice, they named it twice. You ever heard that saying before? I actually think they named it that specifically so it would fit that phrase. Before you ask, there aren’t only two mountains here, and there is no mountain that’s literally just called Mountain. Someone in my orientation group thought that was the thing, so they were asking which one was Mountain Mountain, presuming it to be the largest one near the center. Everyone laughed, but I think it’s an honest mistake. Anyway, I’m not here to review that woman. There is nothing particularly astonishing about this dome. There are eleven distinct major mountain peaks here. You can find a list of them in the prospectus. The biggest one is called Mount Vendelin, by the way, if you were curious. For those of you who aren’t knowledgeable on the history of this world, it was first colonized by a man named Vendelin Blackbourne. So he lent his name both to the whole planet, and now this mountain. If you like mountains, I suggest you come here, and if you don’t, well then, whatever. There is a lot you can do on this mountain, but there’s something a little bit different about this dome. It’s not “state run” which means that there aren’t any robots or human staff members providing you with any assistance, except as part of orientation. That is, no one is in charge of activities. There aren’t any activities to sign up for at all. If you wanna do something, just print your supplies, and go do it. They will execute rescue operations, if it becomes necessary, but there aren’t drones flying around constantly, or satellite imagery. It’s basically the wilderness out here. My guess is that they want to see if anyone develops their own institutions, but they didn’t actually say that. Need to learn how to mountain climb? Right now, there’s no one around to do that, unless you happen to run into an expert who’s willing to help. I believe, at some point, as fans begin to show up, people will naturally take on leadership roles, and basically start little businesses. Who knows? We’re still in the early days, so we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe it’ll be you!

Microstory 2415: Underburg

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Around 400 years ago, advances in materials science allowed for truly gargantuan structures to be built with complete structural integrity. We were constructing buildings that rose kilometers into the sky. Hundreds of thousands of residents could now live in an area once fit only for a thousand or two people. They called them megastructure arcologies for their efficient population densities, low environmental impact, and self-sustainability. No one forced anyone to move to these places, but they were the most logical. Instead of taking a vehicle or train from Point A to Point B, you mostly only needed an elevator. People used to have tons of belongings, but with advanced computing and virtual simulations, as well as component miniaturization, material possessions no longer seemed so relevant. Your unit stopped being a place where you lived, and began to serve only functional purposes. You lived in virtual constructs, and needed only a minimal amount of realspace for your physical components. Even so, the entire point to Castlebourne is being able to spread out how you want. You see, the reason we wanted to concentrate our population on Earth was so that we could give the majority of the land area back to wilderness. Animals can’t live in high-rise apartments—at least not intentionally, anyway. We have more choices. We figured that it was only fair that we do everything we can to stay out of their way, and let them be. Castlebourne started out as an uninhabitable planet, which had to be paraterraformed in order for it to be habitable. We’ve done this to many other colonies, but never before at this scale. There was no life here before we arrived. In fact, we’ve added life. The same rules about verticalization don’t apply here. We’re free to stretch our legs, especially since there’s a ton more land area overall, what with the oceans being confined to the poles. Underburg doesn’t have many people here yet, but I’m sure it will expand. Unlike other domes, it’s not populated by androids meant to simulate human life. I mean, sure, there are robots here to help us get things done, but it’s clear who they are. They’re not trying to blend in. If you conduct a search for 21st century suburbia, it will look just like Underburg does. Big houses; big green, perfectly manicured lawns; garages with two cars in them. Don’t worry, they run on electricity, supplied by fusion reactors. And we don’t have a history of racism and elitism. It’s not about recapturing the lifestyle of Old Earth. It’s about living in a neighborhood of like-minded individuals, watering your flowers in front of the walkway, and waving to each other as you leave for the day. We go to work. Nothing needs to get done, but we do it anyway, because that’s what we find enjoyable. If you think you might like it too, why don’t you come move to Underburg? Yes, it’s a little unsettling with all these empty houses, but it won’t get better unless more people take the leap. We need more residents! Come on, you know you want to.

Microstory 2410: Mildome

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This dome is for flowers. It’s a self-sustaining ecosystem, and it’s growing. Here’s the thing, at the moment, it’s mostly just grass in the center of a vast desert. There are pockets of flower gardens here and there, but they are going to spread over the course of the next several decades. This was done intentionally, not because the builders were lazy, or something. It’s all about the pollinators. You got your bees, you got your butterflies and moths, you got your flies. Not houseflies, that’s not what we’re talking about, nor blackflies. Those are gross and annoying. Don’t ask me the exact species of any of these things, I’m not that big of an expert. I just really like flowers. Continuing on, you got your hummingbirds, you got your honeyeaters and sunbirds, you got your bats. I looked it up, there are other animals that are good at pollinating on Earth, but they either don’t have them on this planet, or it’s taking time to engineer them. I doubt that they transported live specimens clear across the interstellar void. I don’t think you can do that legally, unless they qualify as a pet. You know what I learned while I was here? Humans are pollinators too. I don’t just mean that we plant plants. Obviously we do that, but we also have a history of lifting pollen, and carrying it to other places. Isn’t that cool? Well, you can do that under Mildome, if it strikes your fancy. The creators want this space to be the culmination of the hard work of millions of living organisms, including people like you can me. One day, the whole surface will be one giant garden, like a little microcosm of the world. I will be coming back regularly to see how it progresses, but I can’t wait for the “end” result. Of course, it won’t be finished at that point. The pollinators will continue to do what they do best, and this dome will thrive. Without any negative environmental factors, like climate breakdown, there’s nothing standing in its way. That’s something you have to see if you’re here on the planet anyway. Plus, there’s tons of honey, because of the bees. In addition to taking care of them, and learning about them, you can also eat however much honey that you want. If that doesn’t convince you, I suppose nothing will.

Microstory 1667: School of Thought

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When the Ochivari arrived in what would come to be known as Efilverse, they didn’t really have any specific intentions. They were explorers at that point. Sure, they hoped to gather resources, but they believed the multiverse to be infinite, so they weren’t too worried about whether this one would be useful to them. They could always figure out how to travel somewhere else. The Efilversals didn’t know what to think about these alien visitors either. They didn’t seem to be hostile, and it didn’t seem like they had technology, or other knowledge, that they would find useful. In the beginning it felt like an innocuous situation, and everybody could kind of take it or leave it. They did tell stories about their respective homeworlds, though, and learned from each other just the same. Both races were shocked to discover that they each had faced the same problem with destroying their own environments. Even with a sample size of only two, they were beginning to think that it was an inevitable development. If other races evolved on other worlds, they were destined to destroy it, just like the two of them had. Of course, we know that this is not true, but they didn’t understand that, and over time, the idea became so ingrained in their culture that there was no way to prove them wrong. They didn’t, and couldn’t, listen to reason. The Efilversals taught the Ochivari their ways in a general sense, not by directly telling them how they should do things, but through unintentional inspiration. The idea that any given ecosystem could be saved by taking action to preserve it faded from their hearts—if it was ever there in the first place—and was overwritten by the belief that the only way to save it is to kill anything that threatens it. One Efilversal in particular felt that some form of genocide was sometimes the only answer. The most famous quote of his would become the basis of the Ochivari’s entire belief system. “If a man begins to walk the path towards annihilation, the only way to stop him from reaching the end is to break his legs. There are no nexions from darkness to light.” In this case, a nexion is a small path that connects two paths somewhere after the original splitting fork. Apparently, you can’t even walk back in the opposite direction in this metaphor.

The Ochivari travelers saw no problem with the man’s claims, and took his words to heart, along with many more. He seemed to be the wisest of them all, and they hoped that he would help them make the multiverse a better place. They no longer wanted to be concerned with resources and expansion. They wanted to fix worlds. They wanted to prevent others from making the same mistakes. No, that’s not it. That they could do, if they interfered with any given culture’s timeline at the right moment. Instead, they just wanted to stop those who were already destined to fail their planets. They were going to proverbially break their legs. The wise man seemed to be the best person to teach them how to make their new dream a reality. He seemed willing to do as they asked, but his teachings would no longer be given for nothing. In exchange for his help, he wanted to be relocated to a universe that was free from all the drama and trauma. It would have to be normal and safe, and the Ochivari were not allowed to visit it again for any reason. These seemed like fair conditions. Again, they knew that the bulkverse was infinite, so if there was only one universe they could not save, even if it needed it, then that was a small price to pay. The teacher actually stood on a hill, and continued to disseminate his philosophy, but it eventually turned more into a group effort. The Ochivari came up with ideas that he had not thought of himself, and eventually, the radical antinatalistic school of thought was born. Once the planning stages were complete, the Ochivari stayed true to their word. Two volunteers agreed to transport him to a random universe. Unfortunately, the psychological disease he carried managed to follow him through the portal, and once he was on the other side, it began to infect everyone there as well.

Microstory 927: The Universe Itself

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The anthropic principle is an infamous, and oft misused, scientific maxim that basically states that we exist within a universe that has itself come into existence to allow us to exist and evolve, so we can observe it. That was a bit of a whirlwind. So I’ll break it down some more. This does not mean the universe exists, or exists in the way it does, in order to support our lives. It simply points out that if it did not allow us to exist, we would not be observing it at all, and couldn’t remark on it. This may sound mundane, and even obvious, but it’s actually a perfect way to illustrate the rarity of life. Take this further, and recognize that even a minute change in the cosmic temperature would result in a wildly different set of circumstances. So we have heat going for us. Gravity is at a constant, allowing objects to coalesce, and form the heavenly bodies, so we have somewhere to stand. Atoms contain varying subatomic particles, which allow for an array of useful fundamental chemical elements, and by extension, molecules. Our solar system lies at an ideal distance from the galaxy’s central black hole, and the its edge, to support the creation of topographically asymmetrical rocky worlds. The gas giants, the moon, and interplanetary gravitational interference in general, protects us from many bolide impacts that once created life in the first place. We have an atmosphere and magnetic field to protect us from solar and cosmic radiation. The primordial ooze that started it all adapted to suit an ever-changing environment, to eventually evolve into the creatures we know today. Your biological mother and father joined at the exact right time, under the exact right circumstances, and your mother carried you under the exact right conditions to eventually make you the person you are today. I say all this, because it barely scratches the surface of what it took to get us to this point in time. While the universe is an unfathomably massive place, literally—and it would be practically impossible for alien lifeforms to not exist somewhere, in some way—the chances that anything exists is negligible. The math was never in our favor. The fact that the universe is here at all is, quite honestly, a miracle. There is just too much working against reality to allow for the creation of something, in place of nothing. A lot of people believe in a God, the creator; some supreme being that has determined what shall be, and what shall not, and some believe this entity continues to make decision. But I worship the universe itself, along with time and reality, because it’s far more a marvelous thing that it just suddenly came into existence, when it really shouldn’t have. This entry began as nothing more than an ode to the powerful force of the tides, but the moon and sun are only a fraction of what I’m grateful for cosmically speaking, so I just had to mention everything.

Microstory 915: Indoor Plumbing/Energy Grid

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I think this is something that we can all get behind. It’s pretty easy, living in the developed world, to take for granted the basic utilities to which we have access. As I know you know, there are parts of the world without these things. They walk great distances for clean water, or just water that isn’t so clean. Not everyone has electricity, or heat, or air conditioning. A lot of these people are doing fine, so I don’t want you thinking I’m saying everyone else’s lives are terrible. I remember reading about an uncontacted tribe—I believe somewhere in the Amazon, and they may not be totally uncontacted—that does as little as possible. They wake up late, hang out most of the day, and only do as much work as they need to survive. They don’t have plumbing or energy, and it doesn’t seem to bother them. I’m not here to say that it’s unreasonable to want to return to a time before these things. In the future of my stories, you’ll see a sliding scale of technology in the world. Some will embrace amazing advances, even going so far as to upgrade their bodies to nonorganic substrates. There will be those, however, who would prefer to live without these amenities. There will be people who fall somewhere in between these two extremes. And for the most part, that will be okay. The only time the governing system should step in is if these people begin to needlessly damage the ecosystem with their way of life. We’ll let them live like nomads or pioneers, but we’re not gonna let them tear down forests for farms. And we’ll let nonorganics build superstructures, but they better be taller than they are wide. I’ve recently signed up for a special renewable energy program. Even though renewable energy sources do not exist in my area, I do pay for it. For every bit of energy I use, my bill goes towards offsetting my carbon footprint by providing wind power in regions where the infrastructure has already begun. There are still some major developments we need to make in that infrastructure, and in efficiency, but I wanted to take a moment to appreciate how nice it is to flip the lightswitch on in my home, and be fairly certain that the lights will turn on. Please note that KC Power & Light has, in recent years, been experiencing frustrating power outages. It all comes down to how much the growing population is taxing the system. What we need are microgrids, and personal renewable equipment, but that’s a story for another day.