After Earth, Part 4

A Trailing Edge story, by tycho garen
on 1st August 2008. (commentary)

This is the fourth 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 Winter.

This time, I had come to Marrakesh for a slightly more oblique reason. In the several years since my last visit I’ve been able to learn a lot about the pace and tone of this particular dome during the exodus period, what the people were doing, what they thought about what was going on around them, how they orchestrated the exodus, and so forth. The Visa Riots left Marrakesh mostly unscathed and in a certain sense the Colonial administration was descended from the governmental structure in the dome, so we learned a lot about Marrakesh growing up on the colonies.

That history, as you might imagine was somewhat whitewashed–this is another topic that I’m sure will evoke a groan or two from former students, as exploring the roots of this history have been a central part of my research program for the last 30 or more years. Why did Marrakesh survive the Visa Riots? Why didn’t the dome’s society eventually collapse? And what happened on the other cities, of which we know even less during that time?

I’ve spent a career trying to answer these questions, and the results have been mixed. Last year I received a general history of the exodus written by someone who was young during the Riots, and then not only lived through the resulting epoch and then wrote about it. As you surely know, the record of the ongoing analysis of contemporary events during the Exodus is fractured, and there were details in this history that even I hadn’t seen elsewhere.

Most notably, I learned about a character, one “Edwin Noam” who lead a short anti-emigration movement right after the Riots. I’ve never seen this name before, but then the surviving histories of the anti-emigration movement are sketchy at best.

Like all of the other pro-Earth movements that proceeded it the anti-emigrationists were very forceful, but ultimately unpopular in their day. If I squint hard enough, I can argue their side–given my ambivalence toward the exodus’ effects on everyone left here–but the general consensus is that they were deluded and sentimental at best, and more typically that they were simple reactionary stalwarts.

There were a series of summits between several European and North African Domes–Rome, Cairo, Marrakesh, Tunis, and some others early on–on the subject of population consolidation. resource management, and structural maintenance of the domes: before the riots there was enough industry and governmental infrastructure to stay on top of all these “bare minimum,” but no one cared enough it seemed. Three years after the Riots, there wasn’t even a mayor or dome Council left in Marrakesh, the “best off.”

The other domes that Edwin Noam apparently tried to organized are–by now–completely abandoned, collapsed, or simply not safe to enter alone–and besides, given that I have a series of engagements around Jupiter and on Titan late next year, I really can’t linger now that my other obligations are fulfilled. Besides, given that my chances of finding anything here is slim at best, I thought it best to avoid fishing expeditions.

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  1. Is it Edwin Noam or Ediwn Noam? You’ve got both in there.

    Comment by Gelf — 1 August 2008 @ 7:12 pm

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