Morning all, time to get started on another morning prompt. I do like these. They wake up the brain and no matter how I am feeling I always find my brain shifting into writing mode by the time I am done with a prompt. Even if I didn’t feel like writing before I sat down. Which I’ll be honest, I don’t feel much like doing. But the timers are still to be set for the morning prompt. So lets see where we are after that.
As always, my brain shifted into writing mode and I am ready for a day of writing. Which is good because that is what is on my schedule today. I also like how this prompt came out. It is more of a condensed story idea. I think the story is earlier. Building the city and then having the disasters strike, but I like the concepts.
Tuesday, June 11th: No other city was like it.
No other city was like it. While there was a substantial portion of the city above ground, most of the city was located beneath the surface. When he learned of it Dave thought the city would be small, a city barely capable of sustaining the name city. He thought ‘town with pretentions’ would be a ore accurate term. Yet here he was and he realized it was an actual city.
He knew that it was a planned city and that it was probably planned ass smaller than it actually became. The person who designed the original city, Mitch Gaveston, wanted to create a more eco friendly space. He wanted to use less resources and to create a more sustainable city. It was, when built, viewed as a rich man’s pet project. A few viewed it as theory and more than a few viewed Mitch and those working with him as slightly cracked.
The city was build in the middle of the desert. Above a vast wasteland, at least originally. The houses were underground so they would keep a constant temperature and need to use less fuel for heating and cooling. There were underground greenhouses where food could be raised in closed environments. It used less water and because it was a closed environment no pesticides were needed at all. In addition, crops could be grown year round. The power for the city was a combination of solar and wind.
The land above had a few buildings, but was mostly a vast network of solar panels and wind turbines punctuated by protected air shafts leading to the city below. Initially the city was built to house about a hundred thousand people. Small as far as a city went, but larger than any other endeavor of this sort. Then disaster struck.
‘Or rather a series of disasters,’ he thought looking around the main atrium. The world had a three year span where every sort of natural disaster seemed to take turns buffeting the human population. Crops were ruined, fuel distribution became interrupted and in many place limited. rationing of every sort became the norm. Except in Mitch Gaveston’s city.
Their cisterns gathered rain from the storms that flatted the crops of others. Their turbines and solar panels provided uninterrupted fuel and their greenhouses made certain that if rationing was mentioned, it was a minor thing. To offset the rationing, drought resistant plants were allowed to carpet the area around the solar panels and sheep were placed in small herds to wander between the large panels and eat their fill. As things worsened elsewhere, people began moving to the city, increasing it’s size and expanding it’s footprint. With a population now just over one million, it was still able to keep to it’s ethos and no longer an oddity it was serving as a model to study.
Ten til Midnight 