After Earth, Part 3

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 31st July 2008. (commentary)

This is the third installment in the second sequence of the Trailing Edge story. Read part one here, or part two. I once again leave you in the very capable hands of Mr. Leon Winter.

In the century before the riots, many of the cities on Earth were incased in large series of domes. The “pro-Earthers,” for lack of a better term, thought the domes were the solution to all of Earth’s problems. he idea was that a dome would help stabilize the increasingly erratic weather patterns, solve many resource concerns by making urban cities nearly closed environmental systems. As it turns out, closed dome systems made colonization–not life on Earth–viable.

It was almost as if, people were so entranced by the possibility of space colonization that they couldn’t wait to get to space so they decided to bring space colony-like environments to Earth. Earth, however, unlike the early colonies made no effort to monitor or control the birth rate, and life under the domes was considerably easier than it would be for any of the colonists. A baby boom followed in short order, the domes–built for centuries, based on historical population growth curves–overcrowded in a generation, and the integrated systems fell apart.

Somehow, Marrakesh Dome didn’t riot. The dome was built bigger, the population density was lower, the baby boom hadn’t been so intense, the visa controversy wasn’t taken as an attack on the citizenry. All of these factors, likely, combined to save Marrakesh, though I’ve never been to suss out what happened in enough detail. It’s hard to find historical records of something that didn’t happen, particularly when the records of what did happen were destroyed by the event.

In any case, Marrakesh became the seat–and focal point–of the last significant age of Earth politics and culture. And while that era has come to a seemingly abrupt end, there’s something that almost passes for a community underneath this dome–London and New York domes (and others) have been totally abandoned for decades.

And so this is where I always come looking for answers, when I need to make sense of this part of our past. I’ve recovered vast amounts of pre-riot history, some records from the mirror of the spaceport authority, and although it has never been central to my own interests, I’ve taken advantage of my trips here to record interviews and accounts of contemporary life in the dome. I’ve thought about sending this material in a tight beam to the outbound fleets and convoys, but I don’t see the point really. Maybe I can put it in my will.

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  1. [...] the third installment in the second sequence of the Trailing Edge story. Read part one, part two or part three. I once again leave you in the very capable hands of Mr. Leon [...]

    Pingback by Critical Futures: a next wave science fiction review — 1 August 2008 @ 8:10 pm

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