Cloud Cuckoo Land

Simon lay back in the soft, long grass, his hands behind his head, his legs crossed. Simon's binoculars lay in the grass next to him; he still held the strap in his hand. There was not a cloud in the sky. He took in a long satisfied breath, and bathed in the warm light of early morning. Then he yawned lazily, letting a lung-full of air escape with the kind of sound one is usually told to make in a dentist's chair. Simon closed his eyes, felt the sun's soft glow; could see it through his eye-lids. It was Sunday, and a very nice day to go city-spotting.
For quite some time, he remained like that. He thought about things. Simon did that quite a lot. He was not a very talkative person, but he did notice things that went on around him, and then he thought about them. People often concluded that when you didn't say much, you weren't with it; that you were daydreaming or something. The truth was, he would be listening intently, desperate for a spot where he could add to the conversation, which never came. He wanted to join in conversations, but just couldn't think of anything to say. He found that very frustrating, it made people think he was stupid or something. That was the way they acted towards him sometimes, anyway. He consoled himself with his favourite saying: "Silence is golden" and he adhered to it. It made him feel better, knowing that his inability to talk to people was a good thing.
Simon felt that he was often aware of many things that the others did not notice. While they were carrying on, those they were talking to waiting impatiently for their chance to answer, he was doing more than just hearing what they said. He was actually listening. This gave him a sense of superiority. That was why he liked to get away from the others. That was why he liked to go out into the countryside and go city-spotting. Sometimes he wondered whether his time-consuming hobby affected his social-life; whether his oratory skills had diminished because he socialised so little, rather than that he socialised so little because of his mediocre oratory skills.
City-spotting was Simon's favourite hobby. Its nearest comparison was the frequently practised train-spotting of the twentieth and twenty-first century. The difference was that his hobby seemed infinitely more interesting than standing next to railway tracks and having barely enough time to scribble down a train's number when it passed. That particular hobby had died out in the mid twenty-first century, when the numbers on the sides of trains had started to blur. They had become unreadable because of the trains' increasingly high speeds.
Cities did not move quite so fast. Simon had time to wonder at the beautiful architecture of the buildings, and relish the grace with which they slowly drifted past. He would take his binoculars and try to read the city's name which would be written on its side in ridiculously large letters. If they were directly overhead he would stare in amazement each time, scrutinising every inch of the intricate maze of pipes and tunnels on their undersides, never getting bored of it. He knew practically every city in the area.
Suddenly a shadow passed over his face. The orange glow he had thus far seen before him fell away, and all was dark. Simon's mouth rose up into a smile of excitement. Could it be a city? He hardly dared to open his eyes and look. When he did, he was both pleased and disappointed. It was a city technically, but it was so small that it would more appropriately have been termed a village. Simon brought his binoculars to his eyes. He squinted through them; the sun was not entirely eclipsed. Nevertheless, Simon was learned enough in his hobby to know that it was the local transfer ship; the mundanely named A-slash-D 0237. It was bringing minerals and iron-ore for a rendezvous with a city. That would mean there would be a proper one around soon, he realised with glee. Things were starting to look more promising now. The A/D-0237 was a mere three hundred meters wide and about the same length. She was rounded, a bit like a malformed egg; a Cirrohumilis class ascender-descender. Simon could not see any of the detail on her because of the sun. Not that he minded much; the A/D-0237 was the Skyship he saw the most.
Simon dropped back down into the comforting grass. The warm, calm environment made him feel drowsy. The day was almost too good. He looked up through a frame of long grass, up at the little ship; it was getting ever smaller. It was going quite high. High enough to be meeting a Altocumulus-class or maybe even a Cirrostratus-class city. Simon waited a while, a soft breeze rustling the grass around him. Then he couldn't bear it any longer, and raised himself out of the grass to take a look around. He held his breath in wonder at what he saw. There, still quite far to the east lay a monstrous example of a Congestus class city, seemingly trying to outrun the sun in its journey westward. He had not seen such a huge city in a long time. Eagerly, he lifted the binoculars and peered at the huge rounded city that hung there, still many miles away. It's silvery-white exterior bathed in the light of the sun, a silvery lining surrounded it. Green, plant-filled domes graced its upper surface, like rainbow-tinted bubbles in a bath. It stood in sharp contrast to the blue sky around it. If he had remembered to bring his camera, he would have loved to get a shot of it. Large red letters on its front spelt out the word "Sundancer". Simon made a mental note of the name; he had not seen this one before.
Simon marvelled at the magnificent sight. However much he looked at the things, he was always amazed by them. That was the good thing about the cities and about his hobby too; it was always a new experience and so you never got bored of it. The Sundancer drifted along at an almost imperceptible pace. Simon knew however, that it was moving quite fast. The speed was unnoticeable because of how far away it was, and because of its size. It was a good eight kilometres long , six kilometres wide and an amazing six kilometres high. It was the fattest, porkiest Congestus he had ever seen. Simon estimated that there must have been twenty million people living in it.
The Sundancer's design bared all the hallmarks of a Neo-Socialist left-wing city. Neo-Socialist cities were of a one-bulk design; they had few appendages. Supposedly, none of the living areas were any better than any others. The upper areas were covered by recycling forests and communal farms. The only windows in the side of such cities lead to public galleries and other free-for-all areas. Private quarters with windows would have caused preference to be given to these. In a community where everybody was technically equal, this would not have been tolerable. No-one lazed about in socialist cities; everybody had a productive job to do. Robots were not as common, so there were jobs a plenty and no one need be unemployed. Admittedly, robots would have done some of the jobs better, and with more efficiency, but the socialist outlook was that the resulting unemployment would have been even more unacceptable. Unemployment caused "decadent moral and social behaviour such as that found in anarchic cities" -by which they meant cities which were not subject to such tight centralised control. Socialism had made a comeback after the bio-nuclear holocaust fifty years before.
At that time, the world had divided into two sections: the rich and the populous. In the richer North, the sky-drive had just come out of its prototype stage. The hugely over-populated South finally decided that it had had enough. Its crammed territories could no longer hold the vast bulk of its people. The North in comparison, abounded with relatively unused land. The South saw the amount of land that the North used for large houses, gardens, woodlands and such, as being a grievous waste. It decided that it would "colonise" the North, just as the North had once colonised the South. They hoped to achieve this by the weight of shear numbers alone. The Southern leaders drove their people northwards, often with promises of paradise, more often with threats of death if they did not cooperate.
The North could see it coming, the vast flood of illegal immigrants grew day by day. Physical force was used to repel the invading peoples. And still they came by the millions. Horribly powerful weapons came into play. Gas and biological warfare was utilised by the North. That marked the beginning of the greatest catastrophe the human race had ever known. Dated, almost archaic early warning systems in the South kicked into action automatically. Nuclear weapons had been banned by the World Governmental Organisation for sixty years at the time, yet somehow the South had managed to preserve hidden bases that still harboured the deadly threat. Almost forgotten computers in the South analysed the incoming biological attack, and then the slaughter began. Offensive action escalated on both sides. Defensive systems had all been used, crushed or swamped by the end of the first day of hostilities. While the people had stopped; while the people had been reduced to only caring about their individual survival; while the few who survived cowered in what was left of their homes, the machines continued to fight until they had literally run out of ammunition. Then the pitiful remains of humanity became visible; barely visible below the thick cloud of nuclear fall-out.
Disease and mutation ran rife among the early survivors living beneath that darkened nuclear shroud. Millions of the survivors were to starve or die off within the first few weeks. There was still a sizeable population on earth. The shock of their barbaric new lifestyles proved too much for many people: particularly amongst the Northerners so used to pampered lifestyles. One of the major afflictions among these was madness. People needed to shield themselves against the destruction all around them. One extremely effective way of doing this proved to be to distance one's self from reality. Many people lived in alternate worlds and seemed to become oblivious to the horror all around them. Their behaviour was also linked to the many chemicals the North had used during the conflict. Many of these attacked the brain; not going so far in small doses as to kill someone, these noxious gases caused slightly milder side-effects. The fumes from the bombs were born across the planet by the four winds. Many, many people suffered minor effects: these lunatics were the lucky ones.
A small community of more fortunate individuals had escaped the horrors of post-holocaust everyday life. These were the close relations, friends and neighbours of the people who developed the sky-drive and built the first Skyship. This was probably the biggest development of the twenty-third century. The first Skyship looked like a zeppelin: It had the size. The difference was that it could carry many times the bulk. It was not filled with gas or anything like that, it was solid: one big ship-like bulk filled with living space, engine rooms and control decks. Man had found a way of annulling the gravitational influence on objects. Anti gravity fields surrounded the ship (or had that been gravity reversing fields? Simon could never quite remember, he was not the scientific type.) using relatively small amounts of energy to accomplish this.
And so the first of the great Skyships took to the air. Only a handful of people were spared the horrific experience of living beneath the dark radioactive clouds. Only a handful of fortunate people were given the luxury of seeing the sun everyday in those first terrible years. Only a couple of hundred individuals in their Skyship, for in the beginning there was but one.
Only once the sky had cleared and the major danger had subsided, did the Skyship descend, and start the search for survivors. There proved to be many areas spared the direct nuclear strikes. These areas were sparsely populated, rural areas where agriculture had been the main industry. Here, the people had lived quite well by world standards. Exchange of knowledge and technology for supplies began with these people. And the Skyship drifted around the globe, searching for these small pockets of sane, agriculturally based communities which were all of humanity that still remained. Searching the cities had proved a lost cause. These had been subjected to direct hits; that which had survived, died of famine and ghastly diseases.
Nevertheless, progress was rapid among the hardened, experienced rural communes. Within a few years, crudely shaped, low-level Skyships were common. They were rambling hulks, loosely welded together, falling apart at the seams, with sky-drives that spluttered, stuttered and often gave out. But they allowed people to escape the terrible life on the ground and the raving madmen, allowed them leave whatever land had been spared the effects of the war free for cultivation. Many of the new Skyships remained moored near to their land, drifting only a few hundred metres above it. Others, those belonging to the less well endowed groups, made the precarious journey in search of pastures green, or any recognisable pastures at all for that matter. Food remained the main problem for mankind.
Many of the adventure-seeking Sky-ships were never seen again. People assumed their unreliable drives had given out over the seas. Others crashed to the ground with cataclysmic slowness, their vast bulk falling, almost drifting down, but with an unstoppable force. People found crushed masses of corrugated aluminium and twisted plastic drilled into the ground, like some huge corrugated shed flattened under giant feet. There were few survivors. Sometimes, such disasters could only be viewed from the air. This was when the Skyships fell over Badlands; contaminated areas where no-one dared to venture. Sometimes, a pathetic, dissheveled survivor could be seen waving, begging to be rescued. Even the survivor knew that rescue was not an option.
In the fifty years that followed the war, the art of designing the Skyship had come a long way. While the first had been the size of ocean liners, but looked more like floating shantytowns, the new ones were like flying metropolises. They were designed and built by the giant, pre-holocaust corporations that had emerged again after the war. Their vast wealth and resources seemed to have survived the calamities with uncanny success. People suspected their private underground research bases had been so secret that not even governments had known about them. And so they had not been able to bomb them. It was the corporations who had restored order to the world. Under their control, humanity was sorted out. Most corporations started with at first one city that housed all their employees and formed their headquarters. Then, as newer designs were developed, and the corporations grew, they built more. In their hay-day, some corporations had as many as six sky-cities.
Simon pulled at a blade of grass. It snapped. He pulled at another one. It snapped too. Simon was content. Another city had appeared in the eastern distance. He knew that it would already have started the tedious process of slowing down. Cities were fragile things. They were also heavy. For such a mass to speed up took a long time and the inhabitants could not stand too much instability; jerking around; stop-starts and the like. Nor could the plant life or animal life, or even the actual structure of the city for that matter. Their size made them flexible as well as fragile. It was a fact that cities could twist to the extent that one end was three metres out of synch with the other, in heavy winds. With part of the gravity field redirected horizontally, the ship would "fall" sideways. But there were structures that sat or hung on either side of the gravity-reversed central core of the city. That was why it required gentle handling and patience if parts were not to be torn loose as the core accelerated sideways. Stresses in the buildings were constantly monitored by computers.
The city in the distance was shaped like a fat cigar with tapered ends. Long, narrow cities like that were known as Cirrus-class cities. Its political allegiance was also Neo-socialist. It glittered, nearly shon as it reflected the sun's rays. It was a beautiful sight. Simon detected a hint of green; a splash of blue; maybe some jade in its colour-scheme. This might have come from the ecology that sat in the top-half of the city, under a plastiglass roof flush with the white outer skin that covered the bottom half. Simon lifted his binoculars, and tried to make out some more of the city's detail. All cities were different. Simon's new sport was to try and figure out which city it was by its features, rather than by trying to read the name on its side. In this case, however, Simon could only see its front, as the Cirrus was heading towards the mining station where Simon worked, probably to pick up some minerals to replenish supplies for its onboard ecology. Then he recognised the city. It was a not-so-common visitor to this mining station; the Horizonrunner. Simon marvelled at the sight. He stared at the slowly advancing city. It hardly moved. After a few minutes, he turned to see how far the Sundancer had got. The Sundancer had nearly reached the A/D-0237. It blacked out a fairly large part of the sky, although it was very high up, higher than a Congestus-class city would normally have ventured. Simon guessed that this would be so as not to black out too much of the light over an urbanised area such as the mining station. Normally, cities did not suffer from too many problems of this sort: there were not that many urbanised areas on the ground anymore. The Badlands had not cleared up yet, or at any rate, the people were still reluctant to move back onto them. Now they grew wild with strange exotic forests. That land which the people did trust was desperately needed, both for growing food to feed the ever-increasing populations, and for mining minerals to lend nutrients to the cities' on-board farms.
Then, very far off in the distance, Simon spied another city veiled in layers of haze near to the horizon. He could see that it was a different kind to the Sundancer and the Horizonrunner. It looked slightly taller than the Cirrus-class, longer than the Congestus, and wider than both of the two closer cities making their way towards the mining station. Simon had become good at judging size over such large distances. The haze however, obscured any detail on the city, as did the great distance. That city was moving at a fairly swift pace, though. It would not take long for it to get close enough for Simon to make out its exact nature. Simon had not often been as alert as he was now. That made a total of four cities in the visible air space at the same time. Simon had rarely seen that many gathered together all at once. But deep in the pit of his stomach, there lurked a gnawing feeling of uneasiness. It was also dangerous for so many cities to get into such close proximity. They were not exactly renowned for their manoeuverability. If two of them were to get too close, the results could prove catastrophic. But the cities were guided by computers, Simon reminded himself. Their course was planned well in advance to take all the variables into account. There was no chance that two of them would collide. It had never happened, and it would not start happening now. Anyway, they were still seperated by many miles.
As he thought, the cities got closer. The Congestus barely moved. The Horizonrunner's crawl seemed hardly faster than a snail. The third large city however, had progressed at a fair old pace. It had now broken free of the mist and was clearly visible. It sported a mirror-like exterior. The sun was reflected by a myriad of surfaces. Simon squinted, stared through his binoculars and gaped at the beautiful, intricate make-up of a Nimbostratus-class city. It was a fine example of the kind of city built by ultra-conservative, elitist Corporations. The city was made up of many different elongated globes joined together by tubes and huge aerofoils. Simon knew quite a lot about this type of city. They were made up of many layers of interconnected "buildings". Your status in the class-based society of these cities determined how high up you lived; how high the globe you lived in was positioned with respect to the other globes. In this type of state, conformity was everything. You had to fit in. You had to abide by the rules. An act of rebellion was dealt with using severe measures. If you did not fit in, you could loose one or two social class-levels and risk being moved down to a lower, less reputable globe. In extreme cases, you could be stripped of all your slaved-for distinctions and be demoted to the level of the engine worker's apprentice who lived in the very lowest levels of these cities. Young adults started their careers at the bottom of the social pyramid, and would be forced to do the kind of tasks that, in cities with different political views, even robots had earned the right not to have to do. If someone had had the misfortune to be returned to the status they had first recieved at the age of thirteen, they would be forced to start all over again. They would have to re-climb the long ladder of the many-faceted social hirarchy, spending years with the younger members of society before they had regained their original position again. Naturally, this did not happen too often, and on the whole people reinforced the system. Those with enough influence had spent decades attaining it, and had no intention of handing over their hard-earned power to young upstarts that did not deserve it.
With two such varied factions as the Ultra-Conservative and the Neo-Socialists governing the air-space, disputes were bound to arise. In the first thirty years, aerial battles on immense scales were not unheard of. Two cities would stalk each other, circling, getting closer, the final few hundred metres being crossed could take days. As the cities moved carefully towards each other, taunts and abuse would be filling the airwaves. Obscene visual messages would be broadcast at the opposing city, then, finally, they would attack. The cities would have dropped to an altitude of a few hundred meters. The hatches would be opened, the airlocks unsealed, and then, like pirates assailing an old three-master, knives between their teeth, the inhabitants would board the enemy's skyship, jumping the gap of a few feet that still remained between the cities, and the bloody fighting would begin. In the early years, there were cases of such cities being so severely damaged that they plunged earthwards, with a complete lack of discrimination for whose people they had on board at the time. As the cities grew larger however, ground pulping became more disastrous and more expensive if it happened. The sky-drives became armoured and fail-safe systems were introduced to such an extent, that it was more likely for the city to break free of all its drives, plunging down, but leaving its drives still hovering individually in the air, than it was for the drives to give up the ghost. During the last of the political wars, this caused some strange sights. Huge, grotesque black malformations would sometimes be seen wandering aimlessly across the heavens, huge chunks of metal, stone and plastic breaking free and cascading down on whatever unfortunate soul happened to be underneath at the time. These lumps of floating debris were the remains of ransacked cities that had been overrun by an opposing force, looted, pillaged and then set alight. Yet the resilient drives would continue to function until they ran out of energy. Sometimes they could run indefinitely if enough of the energy-gathering solar panels had remained intact. There were rumours of such ghost cities that still stalked the blue yonder, waiting for an unsuspecting city on which it would enact its vengeance, ramming it.
Sometimes Simon felt a pang of yearning for an adventurous life in the open skies. These days the cities were so cosmopolitan, so tame. Living in one was just the same as living on the ground. Except for the amazing views from the observation platforms, you could hardly have guessed you were kilometres up in the air. The cities were so big. You could stroll around shopping malls, you could walk through a park or forest and it would seem like you were on the ground. Even the birds in the trees chirped their cheerful tunes. Nothing bad ever happened in the cities. Life was optimistic there. Life was good. The sun always shone on the cities of the sky. After the years of living in the wake of the nuclear winter, this became the phrase uttered reverently by so many prospective inhabitants waiting to move out of their ash-coated grotty little make-shift homes. High above the clouds, nothing ever came between the sun's rays and the sleek solar-absorbant outer hulls of the cities.
The people of the cities always smiled. They were never unhappy, like their troubled grandparents and parents had been. The survivors of the holocaust had all but died, most of them prematurely. The weight of the suffering did not lay heavily on the shoulders of the newer generations. They wore bright colours in defiance of the browns, blacks and greys that seemed the norm in the years following the war (at first, this was more due to the grime, soot and settling ash than to the actual colours of the garments: anything bright would be dull and filthy within a short space of time. New clothes were thus woven in dark fabrics, and soon this became common practice). The new generation's outlook on life was as optimistic as it could possibly get. They had a goal in life, a meaning. They were to reclaim the earth for the human race. They would start afresh, they would build a better, safer world where nuclear strikes were just haunting memories from a dark and distant past.
Simon was part of this. He was proud to be able to contribute his bit to this attainable ideal. Simon lived on the ground, worked in the dirty mining station, but he knew that up there, in the sky, the others were helping him to create and enact a better, brighter future. That was why he liked to look at the radiant cities as they pondered the jet-streams and gulf-streams of life. They would hang majestically over him, hung with glittering jewels that reflected the sun's golden beams during the day and sparkled brightly with their own lights during the night. He could then see the little windows in the observation decks. Using his binoculars, he would be sure he could see the happy descendants of those disheartened, melancholy survivors of the apocalypse dancing the night away, toasting the brighter future he and they would create together.
As Simon admired the wonderful Nimbostratus, two more cities had appeared in the vague distance behind it. Simon could hardly believe his luck. They were just grey silhouettes against the horizon at present, but Simon knew that it would not take long for them to get close enough for him to see which ones they were. Simon almost brimmed over with excitement. Something big was going on here, something big indeed. These could not be just routine visites anymore, could not be mere supply pickups. Above him, the A/D-0237 had let out a boarding plank to the Sundancer. Supplies were rolling across it. Simon wished he had a comm-unit so he could listen in on the messages in the sky. Then he would be able to know what it was that all these cities were planning. He had heard of such huge gatherings of the cities before. It happened on rare occasions at big celebrations and festivals. He recalled reading about the great gathering of fifteen years ago. For a week, the sky had been blotted out by the feasting populations as they toured each other's vessels. It had not only been an inter-corporational holiday; it had been a chance for the respective engineers to buy the newest techniques employed on the other vessels. It was a chance to exchange ideas. This gathering may be another one of those, Simon realised. He felt privileged indeed to be able to witness the event. It would be something mentioned for weeks in the mining station. At last he would have something to talk about. It was the subject he knew the most about, and for once it would be a big event. Usually, the other workers scorned him when he touched upon the subject of the cities of the sky. Now, he knew, they would listen with interest. He almost couldn't wait to tell them that he had been the first to notice. Then again, maybe everyone already knew about it. Maybe they knew what was going on, and it was only because he was so out of touch with the others, that they had not told him. He spent most of his time doing one of four things: eating, sleeping, working and city-spotting. Socialising with the others did not rate high among his daily activities.
Then it came to Simon. How could he have been so stupid! Of course he knew what was going on in the skies. He had completely forgotten about it. It was the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war! That would be cause enough for the biggest celebration the world had ever known! And now that cities had the option of moving their entire populations without incurring any cost on them, everyone could be at the party! Simon's eyes gleamed. He was about to witness the biggest celebration man had ever known. The most optimistic, life-rellishing party animals the world had ever seen were getting together right over his head. Some part of him wished he could be with them. Some other, shyer part was content watching it all happen from a distance.
Simon examined the intricate underbellies of the two closest cities. His gaze moved to the third city: the Nimbostratus. He could not make out the name. She was called the Bluedrifter. The two faint cities had come closer too. One was another Nimbostratus-Class. The other looked very flat and very wide. That was an interesting design, Simon mused. It was a liberal design, a Cirrostratus-class high altitude city. Of all city designs, that one was most like the earth. It was flat, with normal buildings on its surface. There were also parks and farms on the upper surface of such cities. Simon was disappointed that he could not see its upper surface. It remained mysteriously hidden by the darkened flat-plate canopy, and of course by the fact that he could only see its underside. Simon imagined that if one could see the things upper surface, it would have looked disturbingly surreal, like some giant chunk of land that had been thrown high up into the air, complete with buildings, trees and population.
The economy in such cities was based on a capitalist system. Free trade was the order of the day, there. The people of such cities held the belief that they would be happiest if they had the freedom to govern the city for themselves. The people all had the right to vote on every issue, so long as they proved in a small test that they had sufficient knowledge on the topic at hand, and so would not make prejudiced decisions. These cities were most like the old Northern states. Homes were large, gardens expansive, the design was the most open-plan. Little artificial lighting was used on these cities. Many of the shopping-malls revelled in the luxury of direct sunlight. Liberal cities did not have multiple layers. That made them quite large for the size of the population that lived on them. Normally, the people living in such cities were quite wealthy. Simon often wondered whether they had acquired their wealth because of the political system under which they lived, or whether they were able to live under that particular system because they were so wealthy.
Now, a further three cities had reached the far-eastern mists. Simon would stay until the gathering was complete, even if it took him days. He would miss a few day's pay if need be, but that seemed unnecessary, these cities were approaching at speed. For cities like these however, swiftly meant no faster than what looked like a crawl. Simon glanced at his watch. It was now early in the afternoon. The sun warmed him from almost directly overhead.