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In that city was a tower.
If one were to inquire what manner of thing it was, it was a spindly steel tower, tall enough to hold its own against an eighty-floor building. As there was no space carved out anywhere for any human to live within it except for the first floor at ground level, from a distance it seemed a structure unsightly beyond measure, like the skeleton of a narrow castle.
There wasn’t a soul who knew for certain how a tower like that came to be left standing there all alone, but according to legend, the story went something like this:
This tower was something built before “the Cataclysm,” erected by the dictator of some minor state. Its construction lasted for eight years or so—not that it was completed, but rather that it was swept up in the Cataclysm partway through the raising of the outer walls and abandoned as is.
The engineer of the tower was the dictator’s mother. A brilliant, nonverbal architect, she unfortunately succumbed to mental illness contracted in the course of designing the tower and died by her own hand. Her son took over the remainder of the project after her death; but that dictator too was overcome by madness in the finishing stages, beheading many of his supporters immediately upon the conclusion of the planning.
It wasn’t so strange a thing to have happened, as at the time the world was only moments from collapse due to a combination of nuclear war and frequent meteorite impact. The abnormal climate, atmosphere saturated with nuclear dust, and soil and water contaminated by toxic waste slowly ate through the human population over the span of several years. Even the advances in medical technology that had managed to extend the average life expectancy to 150 years were powerless in the face of global catastrophe.
That was to say, whether a man of power seized by despair were to raise a sky-scraping tower out of yearning for an ideal world, or dig a massive grave, or build a colossal spaceship, or fling now-worthless gold or money over the poisoned earth, or launch missiles against the whole world, none of it was anything particularly surprising. At the time, even the wildest stunt was merely considered par for the course.
Most records predating what became known as “the Cataclysm” have been destroyed. The blueprints to the tower have long since disappeared as well, and even the whereabouts of the dictator who built it have been lost to time. So it was only after the Cataclysm that anyone realized why it was that the dictator and his mother had thrown themselves into the construction of the tower, even at the cost of their humanity. As it turned out, that tower was wholly unlike those foolish structures built to console a people facing imminent extinction.
There was a tower. To be precise, there was nothing left but the tower.
In a land where everything had been lost, only that one tower remained.
From the tower emanated a sound: the regular clicking of cogwheels interlocking as they turned. Thousands, no, hundreds of millions of cogwheels filled the soaring depths of the steel tower. Standing above a land made barren by war and calamity, the tower moved alone, letting out a nostalgic hum.
Whether buffeted by biohazardous dust storms or doused by rains that melted all they touched, not one cog ever stopped turning, the sound of smooth-serrated teeth interlocking endlessly resembling a mixture of the marimba and vibraphone—both instruments that had once existed in the pre-Cataclysmic world.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Ktfgf, atf klcv cb ibcufg mtbxfv atflg ygfjat, cbg vlv atf kjafg wfia bg qblrbc atfw, jcv atf fjgat atja bcmf yeyyifv klat mbcajwlcjalbc mbeiv cbk yglcu obgat cfk ilof. Ccv atja wlgjmif fzafcvfv jr ojg jr bcf mbeiv rff atf abkfg—ab yf fzjma, jr ojg jr atf rbecv bo aegclcu mbuktffir mbeiv gfjmt.
The people came to reevaluate that spindly steel tower. As it turned out, that tower was the salvation of life.
They rebuilt human civilization around the mysterious tower, using pre-Cataclysmic relics to return rapidly to life as it used to be.
But far too much had been razed, too much life lost, too many records destroyed for a complete restoration. Furthermore, the memories of being driven to the doorstep of annihilation by war and environmental destruction fostered a sense of resistance to replicating the scientific technologies of the past.
Caught in a dilemma, they looked once more toward the steel tower. The cogwheels filling the tower to the brim had already long since become something like a god to them, and so they came to a decision: that no more was needed than the technologies to maintain the tower and preserve life.
Enthralled by cogwheels and clockwork, they pored deeply over all that made up the tower, developing specialized technologies over time. The only other technologies carried over from the past were those related to survival and societal order: medicine, production, and maintenance of the public order.
Beneath the tower lay a long, wide network of mechanisms supporting the cogwheels, spreading outward like the roots of a great tree. Upon that foundation they raised a city, connecting cogs to springs to establish railroads and constructing a clock modeled with reference to the cogwheel at the very top of the tower. They planted trees and grass above the clusters of clockwork devices and tended to herds of cattle, building their homes on whatever space was left over.
A very long time passed, and a select few began to study the tower. Each time they managed to uncover one of the secrets of the tower, they beat at the huge bell hung at its peak; each time they heard the bell toll, the people dropped whatever they were doing and gathered at the foot of the tower to listen in awed silence to the scholars’ teachings as though they were revelations from the gods themselves.
The secrets they were able to decipher weren’t so complicated after all: that both the tower and the clockwork mechanisms had been made from meteorites fallen in the nearby deserts; that the regular ticking of the clockwork activated an unknowable substance on the surface of the meteorites; and that it was this alien substance, dispersed through the air, that was their ongoing salvation.
Shockingly, that dictator had realized all this and silently built this tower amid worldwide chaos. The people expended every effort to search for the blueprints to the tower as well as any information about the dictator himself, but sadly no records on him were to be found anywhere.
Over time, they grew bolder and cleverer, and as the population swelled, one tower was no longer enough. The shards of the meteorites that once devastated the earth were scattered far and wide, and so the people studied the tower and devised a design of their own, building another of its kind—a clock tower with a beautiful red roof.
The construction of the clock tower was a success. The tower, which tolled the hour each noon in the manner of ancient churches, offered up in the southern sector a new foundation for life.
The sight of it gave people ideas. In their desire for land as wide as the population explosion demanded, they drove up the next building with astonishing speed.
A monumental manual metronome monument was erected in the north, designed by a scholar as fastidious in his work as his appearance. Being on bad terms with the master of the clock tower, the metronome-maker claimed its clock was imprecise, and that it was in fact his own metronome that boasted perfect time.
In the west rose a clockwork automaton mansion, a sort of museum exhibiting hundreds of dolls that when wound up could do everything from sing to dance. At the very center of the mansion was a small door, just like that of a cuckoo clock, from which a doll emerged at each hour to greet the passersby.
The master of the mansion was a wealthy collector, not only of dolls but also of jewels, clothing, clocks, books, and so on. Being of extraordinary intellect, the master of the automaton mansion was said to have built this mimicry of the Central Tower on a paltry whim, subsequently pronouncing the original an unremarkable and tedious construct. Despite the sheer arrogance of those words, many migrated west, eventually cementing its position as the wealthiest of the four sectors.
Unlike the other divisions with some degree of history to their names, it hadn’t been long since the eastern sector was established.
Meteorite constructs had already been founded in three sectors. There was room enough as is to house all the current population, and so no one had been feeling the need for another clockwork construction.
On top of that, the eastern sector was where the second-class citizens who’d failed to assimilate into the central and peripheral sectors had gathered after washing out. No matter how sweet the lure of power, none would be willing to gamble on building a city in a location sure to be an uphill slog to develop.
So it was a great surprise to all when a swarm of Central engineers descended upon the eastern plains, leaving an enormous opera house standing tall without so much as a warning. Asking the engineers about the identity of its owner yielded no results, as not even the engineers knew who it was who had hired them.
At the top of the completed building, a colossal music box turned its tune all day. With the emergence of the massive opera house, so too did the barren wastelands of the east slowly heal enough to support human life.
The eccentric who restored the eastern sector seemed to hold no interest in politics or municipal management, staying out of the public eye regardless of the growing population settling in the newly purified land. It was as though the construction had been nothing more than a passing fancy. The seat of the ruler of the city was left empty; it was only natural, then, that the eastern sector was subjected to less oppression from above than were the other cities. The people came to call it “Freedom City.”
Freedom meant chaos, and chaos meant opportunity. Those from all walks of life flocked to the east in search of a new life. So rapid was the development of the Symphonion City that it wasn’t fifteen years before it overtook the economy of the Clocktower City. This, of course, alarmed the masters of the remaining cities.
In the three previously founded cities, including the central sector, the owner of the meteorite construct enjoyed power akin to a king’s. Though their respective dispositions led to differences in their administrative policies, all were identical in that the landlord was the lord of the land. The city masters reigned from the very top of the pecking order, exploiting those below; naturally, the flight of their citizenry was a serious issue.
A decrease in the residential population had serious consequences for the economy of the city. The city masters outlawed flight and enforced severe penalties, but no matter their efforts, the number of those escaping to the east climbed steadily each year.
The masters of each city finally formed a countermeasure committee to address the issue.
But as if mocking their efforts, the master of the eastern Symphonion City never once attended a single meeting, nor could the others threaten or force compliance upon one of unknown identity.
All the attendees could do was curse the owner of the opera house as they propagandized the dangers of the eastern city to their respective residents. They called it “Criminal City,” “the Gamblers’ Nest,” “the Drug Den,” “the Hedonists’ Haven,” “Class Warfare Central,” and “Plaguetopolis,” disseminating rumors mixed with a smidgen of truth.
And yet the people kept heading east, as the absence of class division and the absurd tyranny of a reigning overlord was enough on its own to let them dream of happiness. In the east, anyone could gain power if they had the money, and anyone could rise to the top if they had the ability. For the clever and gifted, it was a chance worth risking their lives.
Whether it was out of this knowledge, or whether the migration had been the aim all along, one day the master of the east attended the interurban countermeasure committee for the first time. Casting an eye over the tense figures of the other city masters, the master of the east spoke:
“Any who sets foot in the territory of the east is a citizen of the east. Their whereabouts thereafter shall be the affairs of the east, so let none of another city interfere. As I will wage war to defend my citizenry, may my citizenry show their gratitude for my protection and my care, and may they be good. If they should do wrong, so shall I unleash the beast in my care to slaughter them.”
The never-before-seen master of the eastern city, it was said, was a white-haired elder.
The other city masters were naturally incensed by these words, but they had long since lost all their young talents to the eastern city. There was no way to obtain new materials, new technologies, or new products without seeking cooperation with the east, and so they had no choice but to accept its terms.
The city masters complained to Central of this insult by the east. Revered as the sacred cradle of humanity’s restoration, the central sector had arbitrated all conflict among the cities to that point. As the Central Tower held monopoly over the sum of all knowledge for the preservation of human life as well as the lost technologies of the past, the other cities were in no position to turn against it. The city masters thus hoped for the central sector to punish the east.
Yet, as if some sort of deal had been struck with the east, Central returned no reply whatsoever to their grievance. Having lost all trust in the Central Tower due to this incident, the city masters each individually set their minds on saving themselves rather than clinging to Central for help.
Some time after, news of the utter depletion of the meteorite supply in the desert spread through every city.
A masterpiece of world building. Love the narrative do far. Finally something refreshing and new
The world building is so good! I can already tell that this is going to be a masterpiece. Thank you for the chapter 😍
Good ol’ human nature 👹
This is a pretty fascinating setting! I’m sure the mysteries will be just as enthralling