 What's this all about? Zotland the Craven |
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The April Chronicles (redux) Ping! FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off the ping list. This is a low volume ping list (every few days). Read: |
Another quick, tiny review of the castle:
Then again, a review of the layout would be of service to our more recent arrivals. Most of them don't know where in space we are.
You might even want to join in. The Habitats A and B are open to entrepreneurship. Many people have set up shops there for handmade items and small restaurants. A good interhabitatnet café would be a charming way to entertain the rest of us. I'd have to warn you that the selections of coffee beans is pretty limited, since we have to grow our own, but spices of all kands abound for adulterating various types of beverages.
Cheese and wine are also possibilities. We have a lot of time on our hands; it takes four years to make an orbit out here.
History of the Flying Castle:
Well, it started with the castle, of course. And at first, it didn’t fly. It was just a castle.
We had a moat, a courtyard, a great hall, magnificent rooms, a tower, and of course, dungeons.
Actually, they weren’t really dungeons. They were caverns and tunnels and excavations under the castle, usually ending where the fractured rock gave way to more solid substrate.
You see, we happened to build the castle upon the site of an old meteor crater. Based upon the strange phenomena that attend this location, I suspect it wasn’t an ordinary meteor, but an interstellar craft of some type.
Of course, nothing of the original ship would have survived a fiery reentry and collision … except possibly some nano-structures, with their own alien instructions and purposes.
And the influence of those alien devices may have contributed to the instability of the founding troll, j.j.fate. Certainly, something did.
Anyway, after the troll was accorded his appropriate fate, and the asphalting was completed, we didn’t want to give up the partying, so we sorta set up camp.
That our shoddy construction was inadequate was made abundantly clear by the arrival of an adolescent with a pet Tyrannosaurus Rex. We needed a bit more room for both of them.
Accordingly, we started construction on the castle, excavating the moat and the underground areas, and just stacking up the building stones until we had a castle.
One thing about the castle is a little different. The walls of the courtyard are extremely thick, and they house a double row of stacked, cozy rooms rather like monk’s cells. Each has a bed, a bathroom, and an entertainment/communication kiosk. They also have a delivery system that supplies packages of no more than about six cubic feet.
This makes the tiny rooms sufficient for workers, students, artists, single visitors, and friendly folks who need a bit of solitude. I’ve estimated that with eight levels of these rooms, and the size of the courtyard, we could house about three thousand guests.
And then of course, the main castle has more spacious accommodations; swimming pools, theaters, libraries, dining halls, kitchens, bars, and so forth.
And that is just the castle. But why did we make it fly?
Why We Made It Fly:
In the original Undead Thread, we were running out of space. Not physical space, but mathematical space.
We were limited to a thread length of 65,535 posts. We started worrying about it.
The only option seemed to be that we would have to pick up everything and relocate.
But how do you move a castle?
Very carefully.
We moved the “Flying Castle” to Loch Ness, and sent a “beer truck” over to Ireland for a large quantity of Guiness.
Then we flew to the Norwegian Sea, where we picked up the Thrust Ring as part of our new ambitions. We carried it across the North Pole, and on to Kauai, Hawaii for a bit of rest stop and refitting procedure.
It was there that we began the process of replacing our jet engines and hot air balloons with Gas-Cooled Nuclear Reactor/Rocket Engines. You see, we were preparing to go into space.
Why? I’m not sure I can even answer that question. It was suggested, and apparently voted on by acclamation, so here we are.
Anyway, we began gleaning Uranium from the ocean currents to fuel our reactors, modifying and improving the process as we went. I won’t describe it in too much detail except to say that it combined aqueous ionic separation using electrical attraction and laser impulsion, with the physical separation processes of mass spectrographs and Hilsch tubes. Essentially, it functioned like a horn of plenty operating in reverse. A lot of ocean water went in the big end, and separated isotopes came out the small end.
We used the process to gather useful materials such as Uranium, Irridium, Gold, Silver, Platinum, and other exotic substances for our engineering projects and processes.
Actually, the gold we didn’t really need in large quantity, but it was easy to pull out of the ocean, and we could exchange it for other useful materials such as the basic structure for the additional habitats, and the steel used to complete their construction.
You see, we needed three structures of equal mass in order to maintain our balance and induce artificial gravity once in space. We also needed the additional room and surface area to supplement our growth of foodstocks and oxygen-producing organisms.
Habitats A and B are designed like large cruise ships, with multiple decks and large open spaces where livestock, grain fields, fishponds, rice paddies, and hydroponics production facilities are spread around, interspersed with synthetic villages, towns, and market places.
Habitat A follows a more or less southern European plan, with meandering narrow streets and stairs linking different levels, while Habitat B is distinctly Oriental in flavor, with crowded markets, and open cafés in glad profusion.
It becomes easy to forget that we have established a world within a world. Essentially, we had to, to make sure that we could provide for ourselves out in the vast loneliness of interplanetary space.
To help with the illusion, each Habitat has its own time zone, separated by eight hours from its neighbors. The Flying Castle Habitat follows West Coast American time. Habitat A is on Greenwich, and Habitat B is set to Hong Kong Time.
Daylight Savings? Forget about it.
But this world within a world has advantages to its smallness. For one thing, one can easily travel from one habitat to the next by means of the spherical elevator cars.
Our Transportation System:
It was realized that as soon as we decided to close up our Habitats, we would have a problem with free movement of people and materials. Accordingly, an integrated transportation system was developed to facilitate such movement. It can be seen that it was influenced by such systems as the Star Trek Enterprise’s turbo-lift system, although that seems to have roughly normal cubical elevator cars.
Our cars have to rotate within their shafts in order to deliver the passengers in an upright posture to the new locations, so the shafts are cylindrical, and the elevator cars are spherical.
Think about it. In space, each habitat is rotating around a central point, and each is one hundred and twenty degrees of orientation different from its neighbor. (Three times one hundred and twenty equals three hundred sixty, a complete circle.)
When you travel from Habitat A to Habitat B, the spherical elevator car, in addition to accelerating and decelerating as it snakes its way through the twists and turns of the arms and structures connecting the habitats, slowly rotates to reorient the passengers to what is “up and down” at the arrival point.
Utility carts and delivery wagons can also be sent this way, although piping and other delivery systems compete with that. Our Castle’s integrated delivery system to the tiny rooms within the courtyard walls is also tied in. One can cruise the equivalent of the internet, which is isolated to the Flying Castle Habitats, and have items packed up and sent into a package delivery system which will bring them right to your room.
Across the literally miles of tubing and interconnections that tie these systems together, that delivery may take several minutes to arrive, but it is all automated.
This is one of the efficiencies that promotes productivity here. Whatever it is you wish to produce or consume, your raw materials or tools are only moments away. If an idea occurs to you to start making something unique, you can be set up and in production within mere moments. It’s fascinating to see the rapidity with which a graphically illustrated tee shirt or other bit of amusement can spread around the Habitats.
Also note that time of day is irrelevant to availability of materials. Someone is always awake.
In space, everything gets recycled.
We know this, but we don't think about it. Prior to taking off for space, we had to think about it.
We had an advantage. We were designing systems that would never have to operate in zero-gee. At least, we hoped so! If we didn't have either thrust or rotation, a non-functioning toilet would be the least of our problems.
The Castle would literally come apart. Our apparent gravity keeps things in place, and our systems were designed to work that way.
So just like terrestrial systems, our water reclamation works by gravity, pumps, and filters. Like systems that were designed a hundred years ago, the first stage involves separation, settling, and the addition of chemicals to speed the process.
In the Castle Habitat, there is an additional stage of biological filtration and separation that is not available on A and B. Their systems are purely mechanical and energy intensive. (At least we have nuclear energy, so don't worry!)
The Castle system takes advantage of the swampy area to the left of the main Castle gate. Treated water which has not reached its final filtration level is released into that ecology to nurture the wild plants. You will notice that they are thriving, just as Irma Bombeck predicted.
It is important that we do this, as there is no other way that a natural ecology could be sustained. Many small creatures depend upon that ecosystem, as confined as it is. From frogs and snails to lizards and songbirds, the nutrients move up the food chain. It is a safety valve for us, and we monitor the health of these organisms.
Most of the rest of the natural world we have captured here is watered by the nearly continuous condensation that occurs on our transparent canopy. The forest and meadows are satisfied with this because they have other methods of getting nitrogen for example. Eventually we may need to take more direct measures, but for now the systems maintain themselves fairly well.
Aquifer collection stations rim the exterior of the Castle Habitat, where naturally filtered water is then mechanically filtered, checked for pathogens and contaminants, and then resupplied for consumption. The entire Flying Castle Habitat is a functioning still for producing clean water!
The separated solids are returned to productive use by a system of double biological separation. First they are tilled into special fields by machines which blend them in like kneaded dough. Selected grasses are sown and eventually harvested.
The collected grasses are then tilled into regular fields as so-called "green manure", meaning pure biological material that is intended to fertilize a second tier of crops.
This is the material that brings the nutrients back to our pastures and orchards. In several stages, possible contaminants are separated out for more intensive treatment.
Metals, for example, are separated in a variety of ways to be recycled in the forges and kilns of our factory levels.
Bob’s typical day on the Flying Castle:
(Morning); waking is easy after the good sleep one gets at one third gee. The tricky part is remembering where I am.
You see, it isn’t because of amorous adventures that I don’t always spend the night in the same place, (more’s the pity), but because my responsibilities take me all over the station. It just seems convenient to crash (excuse the expression) wherever I happen to end up.
Today I woke up in my little cottage on the hill behind the Castle; My little getaway place where I occasionally try to write. I had a bit of fruit juice and then took the tube to the AM-PM in Habitat B. They specialize in the kind of no-frills coffee I like. They also know what I like as a nightcap before retiring.
Anyway, after the coffee and breakfast, I did a little “Management by walking around”, surveying the mood of the people and catching bits of conversation here and there. As you might expect, Hab B was quiet at the time and everything seemed to be going well.
I zipped over to Hab A, which was a little more lively, it being the shank of the evening there. There’s a great little jazz bistro on the fourth level Northaft where I usually stop for lunch, but I was just moving through. Research and hobbies seemed to be the gist of the conversation there, as everyone who isn’t doing mechanical mainteneance of some sort is involved in a food-growing enterprise. — By the way, the cheese shop on that level has a great variety.
My next area to check out was the Thrust Ring. As you know, most of our physics laboratories are on the Thrust Ring, since it offers the best variety of raw materials and energy to study them with. The Astronomy workshops are there as well. We’re getting some really stupendous images these days from the Thrust Ring Telescope Project.
Finally I drifted back to the Castle as activities there were getting into full swing. Besides the obvious farming and livestock centered work in the Castle Habitat, most of our entertainment activity occurs there as well. In the Castle, we have studios and film backdrops just aching to be photographed, along with all the aspiring actors and actresses, and of course “extras” can be obtained by simply tugging on someone’s sleeve.
The Castle is pretty much a social center too. Most of the people who recognize me on sight do so there.
I did eventually end up in my office. There’s not a lot of activity going on there, because my weather projects are currently on hiatus. We’ll need to put a lot of effort and expense into bringing those capabilities on line, and frankly we’ve lost much of our ambition in that regard.
Eventually, someone will invite us to begin our weather modification activity, if they ever get serious about the supposed calamity they swear is just around the corner. Meanwhile we continue to redesign the satellite system and other bits of our plan. And we take it easy a lot. It’s a pretty relaxed lifestyle, as I’m sure you’re aware.
After dinner, if nothing much is happening, I may end up back at my cottage. But if something strikes my interest, such as a new show, or a scientific experiment, or something popping up in the Astronomy lab, then I would probably nod off to sleep somewhere in the Castle, or even on my cot at the office, or perhaps some accommodation in the Thrust Ring.
I never know, and that’s what gets me a little confused sometimes in the morning. Until I have my coffee, that is.
The Cloud Volcano:
Ralph and Benny were sitting at the edge of the meadow, with the forest at their backs.
From this vantage point, one could see the whole valley. Like a giant scoop of ice-cream, it curled around the central focus of the Castle, as if it were holding it in an oversized palm.
It had not always been so. The underlying support for the Castle grounds had been allowed to slowly yield to the curving stress of rotation. This had been designed into the truss structure itself. While it had been flat on Earth, the Castle had actually been on a slight rise of ground. Now it appeared to lie in a hollow.
Ralph and Benny gave no thought to this gradual change. To them it was unchanging.
They remembered the liftoff, of course. They often spoke of it. But something in them rebelled at thinking the ground under their feet could move in such a way, even though they knew that it could. Basically, they just didn’t think about it.
The boys were twelve years old. The liftoff had been years ago, when they were just kids of ten. Ancient history.
Their life was now. They roamed the fields and woodlands of the Castle Habitat, and explored the caverns and tunnels beneath it, for as far as it was safe to go.
And they traveled freely to the stark metal unpleasantness of the Thrust Ring, and beyond to the Other Habitats.
Anyone could do it, and everyone did. The spherical elevator cars would whisk them like message envelopes to the limits of the tube system, locking them out of the dangerous areas.
Neither of the boys had a spacesuit yet, so they could not go to the captured asteroid Plymouth, in the center of the Thrust Ring. They were saving their money for the suits, but they were still growing!
In the meantime:
“I have an idea.” Ralph said, flipping the wheat straw in his lips as if it were an orchestra conductor’s baton, directing the woodwinds to crescendo here, and the brass to mute their voices there.
“I’m listening.” Benny said cautiously.
Ralph sat up, his eyes bright and shining. Benny grew more alert.
“We can climb the Cloud Volcano!”
Benny relaxed again. “We’ve already done that. We do it every week.”
“I mean to the top!” Ralph’s eyes twinkled.
“How? The gripping points only go up about halfway. We’ve climbed every face of it.”
Their “Cloud Volcano” was a simple air vent from the caverns below. To be fair, it was a little more than simple. It had been built in the early construction, and showed some of the massive architectural influences of that period. It towered over the landscape, rising above the soil by thirty meters at least. With a conical shape, and having bas-relief figures cast in bronze on its surface, it was a magnet for young children with an itch to climb.
The low gravity made such activities relatively safe. The carvings gave tenuous handholds up to about twelve meters, and then the smooth metal frustrated attempts to go higher. The gaps between the murals showed polished surfaces from hundreds of children sliding back down.
“We’ll pass a rope around the outside, and tighten it as we go up. If we keep it tight enough, we may be able to walk up the outside!”
Benny thought about it. It did seem plausible. “We’ll need a lot of rope,” he suggested.
“Let’s go get some rope!” Ralph stood up and dusted himself off.
Climbing, as an activity aboard the Flying Castle, and the connected Habitats, was not entirely unknown. Many residents exulted in their relative strength in the Mars-normal gravity.
The problem was a lack of proper climbing surfaces. Residents made do with impromptu and officially frowned-upon landscapes. For this reason, the proprietor who sold them the rope did not ask too many questions about their use of it. He did insist, to his credit, that they accept a reprint of a guide to climbing gear, knots, and rope-splicing procedures.
Soon the boys were ready for their adventure. The lower surfaces of the “Cloud Volcano” air vents were covered with historical friezes, showing classical moments in Earth history. The other five air vents showed historical images from different areas and eras.
Neither of the boys paid attention to whose leg or horse they were standing on, or whose head or helmet got a disrespectful shoe placed on it. To them, the slight ridges and protrusions were climbing surfaces, and that was all.
The “clouds” formed in the cooler air above the air vent, as moisture-laden air from the forges and factories below decks rose up to the chillier climes near the transparent canopy.
Warm sunlight was reflected through that clear material, but on the other side of the thick sheets of Aluminum Oxy-Nitride, the cold was eternal.
Clouds may be an exaggeration, anyway. Some condensation did occur, and the air grew misty as it rose. It contributed to the general haziness of the atmosphere contained in the Flying Castle Habitat. The only real precipitation that occurred came about as a result of condensation at the top of the canopy, which was directed into various collection cisterns, and released gradually during the local “night” as artificial rain.
Benny and Ralph took up positions on opposite sides of the “Cloud Volcano”, climbing in their accustomed manner, but tightening the slack on the rope they had encircled about the air shaft. As they grew accustomed to the assistance offered by the rope, they grew more confident.
When they ran out of footholds, they tightened the rope once more and began walking up the outside of the shaft.
Ralph was the first to get to the top. He looked across to the other side just as Benny’s hand came over the edge. Ralph waved to his partner.
Then he tossed the extra rope over the edge of the huge pipe, and climbed over to begin his descent into the unknown.
This was when disaster struck.
As long as both boys were on the outside of the air vent, the tension on the rope kept them pulled against its sides. By climbing over the edge, Ralph released his side of the balance equation, and his portion of the binding circle followed him in.
Nor was Benny safe. He clung desperately to the rim of the air vent as Ralph tumbled screaming into its depths. Then he was plucked by his harness connection over the edge, and he joined his friend in their plummet into the murky depths.
Had such an event happened on Earth, both boys would surely have perished. They fell a considerable distance in the reduced gravity, and hit solidly enough to break bones, but they survived the fall.
Benny had the misfortune to damage his hip as well as breaking both legs and his right arm. Ralph only broke his right leg. They were rushed into emergency care and are both recuperating nicely, with many visitors raptly absorbing their harrowing tale.
This story is being posted in the internal news channels in order to promulgate the danger of such unsupervised climbing, and of the particular danger represented by this particular episode.
However, no warnings will be posted on the equipment, and no guards will be placed to keep this from happening again.
The management feels that passing along this story constitutes sufficient warning to anyone choosing to be so foolish as to attempt this risky climbing procedure, that they will need the equivalent of a grappling hook attached to the lip of the air vent before attempting to descend in its interior.
The Office of the “Imperial” Weatherman