Vol.1
Excolopolis
Poles of Enforcement
by
Jack L Marsch
Excolopolis
Poles of Enforcement
Published by Jack L Marsch at Smashwords
Copyright © 2013 Jack L Marsch
Cover design and graphic art made by the author
Translated by Matthew Mitchell and Raisza Pergajeva
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Visit the author's official website for more details
http://jacklmarsch.com
Table of contents
Chapter 1 Excolopolis
Chapter 2 Machines
Chapter 3 A new technology
Chapter 4 Attack
Chapter 5 The source
Chapter 6 Science center
Chapter 7 University city
Chapter 8 GlideCraft
Chapter 9 Sector Two
Chapter 10 They know we are here
Chapter 11 Gravitor
Chapter 12 Installation
Chapter 13 Energy war
Chapter 14 Aftershocks
Chapter 15 Initiation
Chapter 16 Preparation
Chapter 17 Defense corps
Chapter 18 Truth
Chapter 19 Beyond Earth
Afterword
Chapter 1
Excolopolis
Never in her entire life had Karen worked for someone as enigmatic as her current boss had proved to be. Thanks to her innate intelligence she had never felt lost, and her intuitive ability to know people's inner nature had often helped her to get on in her career, but now these abilities somehow seemed completely useless. She had supervised R&D programs for the best tech companies in the world, which meant that she always had to be at the top of her game, so she was somewhat piqued to find that it was only this one person who caused her to feel uncertainty.
She had met him in Tokyo half a year earlier.
It was mid July 2075, the summer overloaded the senses, even in the capital. It was lunchtime and she was sitting on a park bench near the bay shore thoughtfully eating a salmon nigirizushi, one of her favorite lunches, when out of the blue a man appeared in front of her.
He was above average height, slim and had fairly regular features, but it was all over-shadowed by rather piercing grey eyes.
He introduced himself tersely, and quickly made her an offer the likes of which she had never heard of in her entire career.
“Hello, Karen! My name is Sean Steersman. You may have heard of me in connection with the Excolopolis project.”
Startled, Karen nodded almost imperceptibly and the man continued.
“If, till now, you thought you were working on the cutting edge, you are badly mistaken,” he informed her bluntly. “I have a much better proposition for you, if you are interested.”
Karen chewed slowly and stared back him blankly for a moment wondering what to do. She swallowed the partly chewed mouthful with some difficulty, and managed to ask somewhat thickly. “Namely?”
Karen had always followed global tech innovations closely, and one of them was the Excolopolis project: a truly remarkable city construction plan that was primarily characterized by the huge amount of weird stuff it was to contain, not only in the scientific sense.
Steersman gave a rough outline of his plans right there on the park bench, then they met a couple of times after that first meeting to discuss it further, but she was immediately struck by the man's bizarre personality. She could not decide whether he was just a brilliant business man, or some kind of mad, unrecognized genius. Eventually Steersman had had to leave Japan, but before he left he told Karen that if she took the offer, she could name her price.
And she did.
The city
Karen had accepted the offer two months before, and since then she had been working in Excolopolis. She had only one responsibility: managing the city's urban planning program. The only part of the job she really had trouble being enthusiastic about were the issues with local building authorities. As it turned out however, she had no need to deal with them as the city was situated on a 200 square kilometer block of private land that Sean Steersman had so unprecedentedly bought from one of the member states of the United Nations of Europe. The land came with some rather unusual privileges. It did not count as a separate state, neither was it private property. It was a sort of modern province within the territory of the UNE.
As things stood though, it wasn't the grandiose mission that her colleagues had led her to believe. On the one hand, she now knew all of those to whom she could turn to for advice and so was able to sort out any standard issues that arose. On the other hand, every authority, construction company and team of specialists treated her every request as if it was their only goal in life, though for the time being, she could find no reason other than the lure of money, to attract her to this part of the world.
*
The streets were virtually empty as she drove through the town. On all sides, monstrous creations appeared each week, a remarkable feat from a high-tech construction perspective. The speed at which buildings sprouted up across the city was remarkable even for a place where huge quantities of money lay.
“Oh, my! They're not even skyscrapers!” She exclaimed to herself as she looked out through the wind-shield. Despite their gigantic size, they appeared to be quite weightless. Standing next to each other, they projected a rather bizarre, unearthly quality, alien structures standing on supports that looked like arms and legs. With their lithe, stunning bodies they looked almost alive or, at least, as if they were about to come to life, stand up and walk away. Thus, the city quickly gained renown, so quickly in fact that even before the first building approval was issued, people from all over the world were talking about a revolution within the construction industry.
The attention never waned, not to mention the furor that surrounded the person who had created and funded it all. When talking about Excolopolis, there was always one name mentioned no matter what the discussion, whether it was politics, technology or in the news. The attention was still more remarkable for the skepticism held by many of the world's biggest scientific authorities, who considered what was happening to be a physical impossibility. However, the success of city went far beyond being just an architectural masterpiece. Something else was happening behind the scenes. It seemed as if Excolopolis was being deliberately pushed as a gathering point for all leading scientific research companies. For Karen, this was the main reason for coming here: to become familiar with these companies. Steersman lobbied amongst these companies with hundreds of billions of dollar worth of capital, convincing them to move their research facilities to Excolopolis. Nobody knew how he did it, what sweet talk he used, but those he had visited so far had all come. It was frightening, Karen had many times though to herself.
And now, as the large majority of technology giants dominated space in the tower blocks that were offered to them, the hunt for smaller research companies began. Karen knew that beyond the tower edifices, each company employee, from top management to the cleaning stuff, received a house or an apartment that was well above the average standard they could have expected. There were of course differences in size and level of luxury, but the move was well worth it for everyone involved. Karen constantly dwelled on the power of influence Steersman had.
She arranged a meeting at the Diligent Structures offices with chief architect, Eddie Malory. His company had designed all of the tow
ers in Excolopolis. In fact that was all they had done for ages, as they hadn't had time to accept work anywhere else. The company worked in a traditional, yet extraordinary light building that had been entirely dedicated to them. A large hall lead to the inner sanctum; an airy, sunlit workspace designed to stimulate cutting edge creativity.
“Hi, Eddie,” Karen greeted the architect, who was standing with his back to her.
“Karen!” He turned suddenly, and moved to shake hands with his principal client's number one assistant. He enjoyed working with Karen, much more than working with Steersman, whose blunt attitude and incredibly high expectations tended to be rather oppressive.
“Come. Let's go to the presentation room. I have already prepared the designs for you to look at.”
“Okay,” said Karen, following him through to the next room.
“Can I get you a cup of tea, Karen?” asked the assistant, who was leaning on the counter with a phone earpiece hanging on one ear and, on her other side, a small projector beaming images onto the screens in front of her.
“Yes please, Helen,” Karen answered, smiling.
On the table and walls projectors showed some of the blueprints, but traditional models were also setup nearby, every one of them breathtaking.
To Karen it seemed impossible to imagine the tiny models standing out there in the city, full size.
“Are these the ones?” She nodded her head towards the models.
“Yep, how do you like them?” asked Eddie.
“Truly awe inspiring, Eddie,” she replied.
“Here you are.” Helen placed a tea tray on the table nearby.
“Thanks.” Karen walked closer to the models, leaning over them so that her nose was almost touching the precisely constructed miniatures.
“Tell me, how do you manage to get these structures to stay up?” asked Karen.
“I have no idea.” He looked at her with an almost childlike innocence.
“What do you mean you have no idea? You designed them,” she said, exasperated.
“We design them, that's true. But only Mr Steersman had contact with the construction companies. You had better ask them how they do it. I'm sure you'll meet them too.”
“How can it be possible, though?” Karen walked slowly around the table.
Eddie looked across the table at her, one eyebrow raised. “Well, I honestly don't know. It seems that it must be. One thing is for sure, our current work stands far above any we have done in the past. And, I have to say, we are pretty proud of it, too.”
“How did it all begin?”
Eddie pouted moodily, looking more like a bohemian artist than an architect. He really loved his job.
“It was three years ago when Sean Steersman looked us up. We were in London at that time. We were designing the usual mundane housing estates, production line stuff, one after the other, you know.”
Karen nodded.
“So, we were given an offer.”
Karen smiled. The offer. That's where it usually began.
“And what happened next?” she asked, sitting down.
“The job was to design an entire city business district. At first I thought it was just a practical joke: you know, ex-university class mates playing a trick on me or something. Last week I saw a program on TV, where …”
“Yes, but when did it all become a reality?” Karen cut in.
Eddie blinked. “Oh yeah, well, about thirty minutes later when he put a four billion euro check in front me. He didn't say another word about the job. He just told me where he'd bought a 'plot' of land, and then he told us to start moving in as soon as we could, because we would be working at the site.”
“Really?” Karen registered her surprise.
“Yes, we arrived to a complete wilderness. The substrate was superb, but nothing special apart from that. The next day new companies started arriving. It looked like a huge rock festival in the middle of nowhere.”
“Jesus!”
Eddie nodded. “Yeah … but it was when the roads and highways were laid down in one night that everyone started to take the whole thing seriously. That's when we all got that it wasn't some kind of scam.”
“In one night?”
“Yep. It was a massive joint effort. Loads companies were brought together with enormous stocks of assets and personnel. No one had seen anything like it, not before or since. There was no stopping it and it looks like there never will.”
“And what did he say about the work?” She asked.
“Oh yeah, the work. Well, we had to design office buildings. We'd already started the visualizations and mock-ups, but even our most daring designs had to be binned. Mr Steersman said they were all centuries behind the times. Then we asked him in for more detail about his concepts and ideas, and all he said to us was: ‘design a building that looked as if it was a quarter of its weight’,” Eddie paused.
“What?” Karen looked a little confused.
“Yep, we looked like that too, when he first said it. He said that we should think outside the box and create designs as if we had a site with a quarter of the normal force of gravity.”
“And what did you guys say?”
“At first we didn't know where to start. We had no idea what it was all leading to. Finally we got Gore; he is like the god of the creative design world. We got him contracted to us. He's a sort of freelancer, but he's left his mark on pretty much every industry where futuristic visions with no limits were the aim. When we showed his sketches to Mr Steersman, we were given permission to start designing immediately.” Eddie breathed out.
“Amazing story,” said Karen, waiting for him to go on.
“Indeed it is. Even Gore couldn't believe that any of it was feasible, but believe me the guy has really weird mind, like there are almost no limits to his imagination. So, now you get the idea of how much we were floundering about in dark. But, we designed it and handed over the plans.”
“And?”
“And it was built. Within two friggin' weeks … sorry.”
“It's okay.” Karen smiled.
“I still vividly recall the amazement I felt when we stood in front of that first impossible tower. We stood there looking at it, and couldn't believe that it was even standing. I remember we all felt miserably small standing at the base of that building, although it was us who designed it. It's the TriasLabs building, the first one built in this city.”
“Yes, I know,” said Karen, “but you really don't know anything about how it was possible to build them?”
Eddie shrugged. “Well we don't know the details. We only know that Mr Steersman has a construction company called Karelson Brothers. They put the buildings up, but how do they do it I really haven't the slightest idea. Whenever they had any questions they just called me, clarified the problem, and that was it. Ask them. You'll need to talk to them about the new plans anyway.”
“Okay. I guess I am going to see them soon,” Karen said, and then abruptly changed the subject “So talk me through the new buildings.”
Eddie shrugged, then moved back to the models and began the tour.
*
A couple of hours later, having been over the most salient and pressing issues, Karen left Diligent Structures. She was still processing all that she'd heard. In less than eighteen months, eighty-five of these towers had been constructed, at an incredible pace. She still couldn't get her head around how it had been possible. She decided to do some more digging and get to the bottom of it all. She had to find out more about what was going on, what made it was all so strange. She felt a wave of excitement at the thought, and unintentionally stepped on the accelerator. It didn't matter though. No one cared if anyone broke the speed limit in Excolopolis. The roads were plenty wide enough, as if they had been specially designed for urban racing.
Karen met Robinson Karelson, the elderly founder of Karelson Bros, at the site of two new high-rise buildings. The construction workers usually commuted in jeeps that were always covered in dirt
and dust and as always, Robinson turned up for the meeting in his own specially tuned offroader.
“Greetings, Karen,” he said, showing her his dirty hands. “I'd better not shake your hand this time,” he smiled.
“Hello Rob,” answered Karen. It was somehow impossible for her to call him Robinson. His name always reminded her of one of her favorite books. Looking at his hands she smiled. “I see you started the morning rather early,” she observed.
“Yes. As the number of building projects has decreased, we've started landscaping work in the Orchid Hills residential area. Yesterday's rain didn't do us any favors either,” he said wryly.
“Yes, I can see that,” Karen said, and turned towards the back of the car.
“Well, what have you got for us, Karen? What creature of mad genius will we be building this time?” The big man burst into loud laugh.
The weak morning sun gave his deeply furrowed face a bronze tinge.
Just like a cowboy, the thought jumped unbidden into Karen's mind.
“We've finished plans for these two plots. I'm pretty sure nothing can surprise you anymore, but this might come as a shock.” Karen was winding him up.
“The suspense is killing me,” said Rob, with a grin.
Karen lifted the models from the back seat of her car and put them onto the bonnet. Each model was about fifty centimeter high. The two models looked fairly similar, complementing each other yet maintaining the flow and look of the business district's strict design concept. There were none of the usual horizontal and perpendicular surfaces and the colors were determined by the building materials being used.
“So … here we go then.” Karen looked up at Rob, trying to gauge his reaction.
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