Subterranean Snow

Outside the tower, it was snowing. Only a few flakes trickled directly onto my shoulders, but many more were falling three blocks over.

The snow came through a great hole in the roof. This city — and I do not know the city’s true name, so I shall call it Oarville — was built within a gigantic cavern dug deep under a mighty mountain. The place seemed empty and abandoned now, except for thousands or even millions of Ancestors who slept in their great bright towers. Apart from those towers, all other lights had been damped down by the supervising machines that concern themselves with power consumption. The result was a permanent dusk, illuminated only by Ancestral Towers shining amidst the underground blackness.

At one time, the whole cavern had been completely sealed off from the outside world; but then my friend Festina used Science to blow a great fissure in the stony roof so she could fly inside with an aeroplane. Although that happened four years before, the city’s repair machines had not yet patched up the damage… which disturbed me very much indeed. The purpose of machines is to work automatically: to mend breakage and to shield people from the Harsh Cruel World. Here in Oarville, the Harsh Cruel World was enjoying free rein — a blizzard gusted with arctic ferocity through the mountains outside, and its thick showers of white spilled in through the roof’s hole.

Why had the damage not been fixed? Unless perhaps the city’s repair machines were becoming as Tired as the people: lapsing into torpor like the woman in the tower. But I did not want to think such a thing — I did not want to think about my whole world guttering out like a candle. Therefore, I tried to empty my mind of mournful thoughts, concentrating only on the here and now.