El'sha's Blog, Day Four

Catch-22

Janery 12, 3263

“Actually, the sky used to be blue,” says Neredah Pradeesh, reaching for a stack of books on the table behind her desk. “Or, at least, it appeared blue to the human eye. The composition of the atmosphere used to allow for an optical phenomenon called Rayleigh Scattering, but in desperation, our ancestors injected the clouds with sulfuric compounds. It was futile, of course, but it bleached the sky white. It will be millennia before the original color returns.”

“Can you describe the color to me?” I ask, quill hovering over parchment.

“The best calculations available indicate it was close to the shade of a robin’s egg,” and, to my amazement, she produces just such a shell from a drawer in her desk, then leans forward and places it in my open palm. The shell is wholly intact, save a pinhole through which the contents had been drained. I cradle it delicately, then lift it to my eye between thumb and forefinger. I trust Neredah’s expertise: she’s the continent’s foremost expert on historical climatology. Yet, I cannot bring myself to believe that the sky could ever have been such a lovely shade of blue. If it had, no advanced society would choose to bleach it, no matter the dire straights they found themselves in. How could anything counterbalance the destruction of such natural beauty? How could a people put their own needs before the majesty of Earth’s splendor?

I’m in a place called Lex, the site of an ancient community and even more ancient battlefields, about four hours hike west of the Bosstown ruins. There’s a college here, similar to the one back in Watertown, home to four or five scholars of esoteric knowledge, Neredah among them. Her office is also her living quarters; there’s a bed in one corner and the walls are lined with bookshelves, presumably filled with ancient knowledge, but I know enough to recognize that the real troves of information are the cabinets of microfilm behind her desk. The ability to store knowledge in the ancient format is forever lost, but a simple microscope suffices to extract it.

“What do we know about… lights in the sky?” I ask, deliberately framing the question impersonally. Neredah frowns, scratching her chin and adjusting her crude spectacles.

“From the level of education you have displayed thus far, I will assume you’re not referring to the stars.”

“The lights that move.”

“Yes, we have documentation of sightings going back hundreds of years. The ancients did too, actually. One could say there have always been mysteries above our heads.”

“What are they?” I ask pointedly.

“I have no idea, I’m afraid. There are a few plausible theories; space debris reflecting sunlight or burning up as it reenters our atmosphere—the ancients did as much dumping in low-Earth orbit as they did in their air and waterways—high-altitude gasses igniting…”

“Could they be flying machines, like the ancients built?” I ask breathlessly. Neredah nearly falls out of her chair.

“Young lady, are you suggesting there could be people trying to reinvent forbidden ancient technology?” She fixes me with an inquisitorial look.

“So the ancients did have flying machines?” I cry triumphantly.

“I’m afraid so. There was a time when even the relatively poor could fly from one side of the planet to the other in a single day. In fact, the principles upon which these machines operated were quite simple, and are well-understood even today.”

Despite her words, it seems impossible to me that someone could build such a machine in 3263. While simple electronics are fairly common—many places I stay are lit with crude incandescent bulbs powered by water wheels and radio and telegraph networks aren’t unheard of—the kind of combustion engines needed to propel land vehicles, let alone aircraft, aren’t just extremely rare: they’re taboo.

“Aero-planes were one of the more insidious drivers of the collapse of the ancients,” Neredah continues, “While records show that there were thousands of these machines in the sky at any given moment in the early 21st century, they contributed less than 5% of the gasses that pushed the Earth-system out of the stable climate it had been in for twelve thousand years.”

“What’s insidious about that?” I ask.

“Oh, yes. You see, about a century before the ancients began deliberately infusing the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide—” she slides an odd sculpture across her desk towards me, composed of brightly colored plas balls connected by white pegs, “they were doing it unintentionally with their flying machines and a few other industrial processes. Compounds like this one reflect the sun’s light back into space, temporarily reducing the energy imbalance that warmed our planet.”

“Wasn’t that a good thing?” I ask, staring at the molecular model.

“Imagine you’re crossing a desert,” she places her elbows on her desk and observes me over steepled fingers, “You’ve just left an oasis and your clothes are nice and saturated to keep you cool. You will surely die of exposure before you reach the next oasis, but you don’t realize it because your wet clothes mask the true heat of the day. Gradually, they dry out, becoming stifling, so you become tempted to remove them. Whether or not you decide to, they allowed you to progress too far into the desert. Calamity was already upon you, but the very thing shielding you from it gave you a false sense of security. So, too, it was with the ancients.”

She goes on to explain how the very activities that altered the climate simultaneously concealed the impact they were having through this ‘aerosol-masking effect’, and when it ultimately came time to abandon them completely, this had the effect of accelerating the heat waves and extreme weather that wiped out global food crops and triggered the Time of Strife. She can tell by the look on my face that I’m struggling to follow the explanation, and pauses to hand me another object from a drawer: it’s a tube made from woven dried grasses about as long as my index finger and just slightly larger in diameter.

“Put the tips of your pointer fingers in each end,” she instructs, “there you go, nice and snug, see? Now remove them.” As I pull my fingers apart, the weave contracts around them, gripping them tightly. “Go on, really give it your all! It’s sturdy: you won’t tear it.” Frowning, I push the tips of my fingers together again and the thing relaxes, but contracts inexorably when I try to remove them once more. I can’t help but laugh at the tricky little thing, and even Neredah cracks a smile. I hold my trapped fingers out to her:

“I give up.”

“So did the ancients,” she says sadly, placing her hands on mine, pushing them together so the weave expands once more, and then holding it still from the outside so I can finally withdraw from it. “There are two ways out of this sort of trap,” she says, placing her own fingers in it, “through outside intervention, as I just demonstrated, or…” slowly, carefully, she slides her fingers free, “Finesse. If you understand the trap, you can maneuver your way out. For all their power and ingenuity, the ancients were sorely lacking in wisdom.”

After the interview, I exit the building and make my way back to the inn where I’ll be staying for the next few days, chopping firewood and working in the local garden to earn my keep. My eyes keep straying up into the infinite white and I try to imagine myself as an ancient human under an eggshell blue dome, with the power to hurl myself into that azure abyss at incredible speeds on a whim. The journey that has taken me more than a week and will doubtless stretch on for months more could be completed in mere hours a thousand years ago. Yet, such convenience easily becomes obligate: why would anyone take the time to walk when they can fly? Far from granting them more freedom, the ancients were forced to live on faster and faster schedules as their technology progressed, more and more removed from the natural world that ultimately made their empire possible. Perhaps, if the hectic pace of their lives had been allowed to slow, they could have avoided the Time of Strife.

I’ve decided my next stop will be Man Hat’n, so I’ve asked the proprietor of the inn to spread the word that I’m looking for at least two travelling companions. My own interest is purely historical, but there must still be valuable artifacts to be discovered amidst the ruins of what was once one of the largest cities on the planet, and the lure of treasure remains a compelling incentive. Wish me luck!