Microstory 2498: Conjunction 11

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These are vactrain hubs, and there are twelve of them. They’re evenly spaced all over the planet, according to an icosahedron model. While the world is obviously a sphere, an icosahedron shape can be overlaid on it in order to minimize the number of Conjunctions needed. It would be utterly impractical to have a vacuum tube that went from one dome to every single other. While there’s technically space for that, it would require far too much management and maintenance. So many of such tunnels would not be used very much, or at all. How many people are going from, say, Ancient Egypt to Prairiedome? It certainly wouldn’t be an impossibility, but that tube would likely be sitting vacant most of the time. Layovers have been a staple for our civilization for centuries, but this system is a lot better than its predecessors. First off, while the tubes themselves are limited, the trips are often exquisitely planned. Because each dome does have a direct line to each of the twelve conjunctions. As you would expect, a dome will have twelve stations, and you go to the one that leads to your destination. Currently, most trains leave about an average of every thirty minutes, but that fluctuates, and will continue to change, because it’s based on demand. If literally no one is going from Conjunction 6 to Conjunction 4, then it’s not even going to bother leaving. It will just sit there until someone signs up prior to the next cycle. I probably don’t need to tell you all this, because there is already sufficient literature on how to travel around the world, but I’ve always loved transportation, so while I’m finding lots of enjoyment from the other domes, I tend to focus more on the logistics than most visitors do.

So let’s talk about how it works once you’re in the Conjunction. As I said, each dome has a direct route to every single one. That’s important. I read up on the history, and the original plans called for multiple layovers, where you travel to your nearest hub, then the hub nearest your destination, and finally your final destination. That would be so bad, but I’m sure most people are glad that they ended up building up the infrastructure much more than that. The Conjunctions are so well-designed, and there is so much redundancy. If you are in a train car with visitors who are going through the same Conjunction, but different final destinations, your car will stop, and have you get off. At that point, you will just about immediately step into a private multi-directional elevator pod. It can only fit eleven people, but if you have luggage, obviously fewer. If you’re in a party of one, you can have a pod to yourself, and if you’re in a party of 22, you’re gonna have to split up. That’s just fine, they have enough to accommodate everyone who can fit in any given train car over only a few moments. Your pod will take you to your next station, where a second train will come for you to deliver you to the right dome. You might still be alone, but the builders thought of this. Not all vactrain cars are the same size. That’s why you tell the system where you’re going, so they can prepare the right one for you, to save the larger ones for more popular domes, even if the popularity shifts hour by hour. It’s such a robust system, I’m so impressed. There are so many things going on in the background, but you don’t have to worry about that. You just get on, get off, pod over, get on, and get off again. Despite there being more than three times as many stations worldwide than there have ever been airports on Earth, travel has never been simpler. And your trip will never take longer than three and a half hours from anywhere else. And that’s assuming you stop for coffee.

Microstory 2477: Wheeldome

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In case you’re confused, this dome is all about wheels. This includes bicycles, roller blades, skateboards, etc. What it doesn’t include are cars and motorcycles. Basically, if it runs on petrol or electricity, it can’t be here. I guess I shouldn’t say that. They do have some electric bikes, but obviously that’s a whole different animal. There are hundreds of wheel-based leisure areas, as well as long trails that stretch between them. They have all sorts of hills if you wanna go fast, and the best part about it is that you don’t even have to hike all the way back up. They have chairlifts that take you back up. It’s like a ski mountain, but for wheel sports. You couldn’t do that on Earth. They just didn’t want to build the infrastructure, and of course in more recent decades, all those old abandoned roads have been demolished to make way for nature. I didn’t come here because I was a skater. I came because I’m not, and I want to learn. I’ve had plenty of time to practice in virtual simulations but never got around to it, despite how accessible the worlds are. I guess I was waiting for this. Having a whole dome dedicated to what might one day become my passion seemed like the perfect place to get into it. It’s real, ya know? Anyway, I tell you that I’m a beginner so you’re not expecting me to give a detailed review of this place. I don’t know how it stacks up against other skate parks. I just know that when you’re working with 5,410 square kilometers, it’s hard to believe it’s lacking in anything. Unless, again, you’re looking to race cars, or something. Go somewhere else for that. Just because it’s got wheels, doesn’t mean it belongs in Wheeldome. Hang ten, bruh. Gotta go.

Microstory 2471: Hubdome

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It may be boring, but someone’s gotta do it. Centuries ago, mail was all the rage. You could send someone a letter a thousand kilometers away, and it might only take a month to get there, or never! Doesn’t that sound neat? Over time, of course, speed picked up as infrastructure was developed, and efficient methods were discovered—or rediscovered, as in the case of relay stations. In the late 20th century, they invented electronic mail, which may lead you to believe that regular physical post was all but eradicated, but not so fast my friend. Adoption was slow, and...people are dumb. They still sent letters. Plus, the population was booming, so even if any given individual wasn’t sending as much, the volume was still increasing overall. It did eventually die down, but one thing that didn’t go away was package delivery. Instead of just the written word, real, useful items had to be transported from one place to another. There was no way to send that electronically. Or was there? Of course there is! It’s called additive manufacturing, and it’s been improving too. Not everyone has their own industrial synthesizer, and there are some things that standard feedstocks can’t handle. If there are too many different types of materials in one item, you can’t expect every end user to maintain each type in their private space. And even if you did, the feedstock itself has to be delivered, right? That’s where this dome comes in. It’s a hub for all your shipping and delivering needs. It doesn’t take weeks to get to its destination, though, unless whatever you asked for hasn’t been built yet. I say, if something you ordered takes more than a few hours to reach you, there’s probably something wrong. Shipping was one of the easiest industries to transition to automation back when human employment was something necessary in order to maintain a stable economy. You pick this thing up, put it in this box, seal it up, and move it to its destination. The programming couldn’t be simpler. Only one human works here. He walks up and down, making sure that things are okay. Obviously, the robots do this too, but they like to put  a human touch in everything, and that’s true of pretty much every planet, except maybe Glisnia. Come here for a tour if you have a few hours to kill, but you could also probably just read the more detailed literature on the prospectus, and get just as much out of it.

Microstory 2466: Grand Central Sewage

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According to lore, this was originally called Primary Sewage Treatment Dome. They changed it, because they wanted it to sound a little more fun. Because in reality, it’s not fun at all. It’s the grossest aspect of this planet, in my humble opinion. Let’s start with the water. Every sufficiently completed dome handles its own water treatment for the most part. Using state-of-the-art plants, the sewage is collected, filtered, and recycled as needed. This clean water is then pumped back into their own pipe network, and if there’s any excess, it can be returned to the planet’s water table. There isn’t much of a water table, but it does exist, and it’s growing every day. What’s left over after all of the water has been reclaimed is called sludge, and while it’s absolutely disgusting, it is absolutely not useless. There are all sorts of goodies in your waste. It can be used for biogas, fertilizer, and even feedstock for additive printers. That’s right, the device you’re using to read this review may be made out of poop! It’s a...different circle of life. Certain useful ingredients can also be extracted from the sludge, like phosphorus, nitrogen, and cellulose. These chemicals are all processed here, and redistributed as necessary. But first, it has to get here. As I said, each individual dome reclaims its own recycled water, but since there’s only one Grand Central Sewage, it all has to be pelletized, sealed up, and transported somehow. Enter the vactrain network. That’s right, the same tubes you use to travel from your residential dome to, say, Archidome, are also used to transport waste. Don’t worry, though. They use entirely different trains, and entirely different train stations. It’s probably right under your feet, though. If you were to step through a maintenance door, and walk down the steps, you could end up in a second station where waste is moved into the tubes. Scrap is shipped from here as well. Every time you throw away some packaging, or a part breaks off from some equipment, it goes to one of these hidden stations too, so it can head off to a separate dome, colloquially known as The Scrapyard. I reviewed that dome as well, because I actually like the utility domes. I find the secret, underground means by which we live to be more interesting than what we do on the surface. It’s not pretty, and it’s not glamorous, but it is monumentally important. Yes, it might be a little weird to know that the chair your sitting on could have been in someone’s body at some point, but trust me, this is better. We used to just dump our waste in a hole, and leave it there forever. Talk about disgusting.