by Unknown
I asked Silvia if she was feeling tired due to the very few hours of sleep she had had the night before. “Not at all!” she answered. “I only wish we could get to the Streets of the Palaces sooner!” The Valley of the Roses was the only thing on her mind at this point. We stopped over at the junction of Dareja for a while. If you take the “Walk of the Vikings” southwards, stopping at this junction is compulsory. We’re a mile’s distance from the hill behind which Silea is hidden. We are now very close to the artificial river that flows through the other side of the valley. As a matter of fact, we reckon that at dusk we’ll be seeing it flowing on our left-hand side.
I didn’t know that Dareja was such an important transport hub. It is necessary to stop here if you want to take one of the ragioza to travel either eastward towards the Hungarian plains, westward, towards the Swiss lakes, southward, towards Liguria, or even if you want to cross the Adriatic or the Aegean Sea.
The population of Dareja is about 3.5 million, with two-thirds of it being permanent residents. Not at all big, that is, considering its world reputation as “the state of the great technicians” and the crucial role it plays in transportation worldwide. It is true, however, that its technical and technological civilisation is unparalleled. Its old laboratories and institutes keep operating with the same pulse and vitality as before. Polytechnics still attract hundreds of thousands of students from all parts of Europe and their settlements and considered the embodiment of taste and moderation. The Naira and the Fierlan, two artificial tributaries of the Silea, which basically look like canals, run through the oldest part of the city in symmetrical lines. The buildings are majestic but perhaps too symmetrical and uniform both in terms of construction and colour, since they’re all painted in alternating shades of yellow ochre.
Dareja is the centre of automation. It is the Mecca of southern Europe, in relation to its technicians. It was with Dareja’s own designs that the Silea was created, and it was Dareja’s wise men that made the construction of the glaciers of Small Giostendal possible. It is the city whose schools gave the world a Yarl, a Boyer and a Karl Hornsen—something like our Curie, Lavoisier, Fermi, Max Planck and De Lesseps.
Hilda told me that, in terms of purely spiritual civilisation, Dareja can’t compare to Markfor, Anolia or Blomsterfor. It never had the same long tradition of spiritual creation. And she said that the changing times and the downturns in technology often hurt the pride of this great and glorious state. Dareja is now a follower rather than a leader…
It’s breaking dawn. The huge bronze Vikings that have given their name to the motorway flank the road. The sight is spectacular! Throughout the whole trip the ragioza hasn’t touched the ground! It’s going so fast that it feels like it’s flying! Stefan says that the ragioza is only three inches above the asphalt of the autostrada, but that’s enough to protect it from any contact and therefore any friction with the road surface of the Viking motorway. That’s like magic considering the weight of this “flying-boat” that speeds like lightning!
It is now morning. If it were up to me I’d stop for a while. I noticed that the vegetation had been gradually changing, an indication that we were approaching the Mediterranean Sea. “And yet we are still far away,” Stefan corrected me. Sometimes I forget how different everything is from what I remember, how much it has changed…
Cypress-apple trees, linden trees, elms, jujube trees, then fruit trees, then century-old plane trees beside the streams and further down endless rows of azaleas and tall, silvery poplars. The smell of the air brings back memories from my childhood field trips. They so dearly touched my soul back then that I remember every detail and I swear that the air smells and tastes exactly the same as then! I can’t put in words what a magical feeling it is to know that I have been here before and that I’ve been given the chance to return to this life: it’s a feeling of triumphant happiness, awareness of my unique destiny, a divine feeling of gratitude!
At the junction of Eliki the all the passengers exchanged the vigioza for several small-wheeled Cives mintels that had been waiting for us there. All four of us got into one of them and continued our journey. After exiting Eliki, the first thing I saw was around a hundred priestesses of the Rosernes Dal awaiting the arrival of the vigiozas so they could continue, in turn, their own journey. I remember having come across a few of them in Markfor too, but never so many of them together. They didn’t look like travellers. The small, soft handbags they were carrying were the only thing that gave them away. Quite a few of them were encircled by children—two or three around each. I counted about a hundred and fifty of them, but they must have been even more! Was it considered as some kind of an “honorary escort” for priestesses or had they been entrusted with the children’s care? You couldn’t tell. They stood there motionless in contemplation and the obedient children stood quietly by their side.
At the flower gardens of the junction of Eliki I saw for the first time what is probably the most absurd luxury of these times, something that I had not seen in any of the major cities so far—not in Markfor, not in Blomsterfor, not in Anolia, not even in Norfor: enormous artificial baskets with a diameter of 15-20 meters decorated with flowers and plants hung from everywhere, magnificent artworks of some virtuoso florist-painter- and wonderful tableaus with themes from the “Advent of the 200” and the creation of the Valley of Roses.
The flowers and plants here are not geometrically or lace-shaped like in Markfor. Here what prevails are the myriad, totally natural looking shades of green, from the light, silvery olive green to the black-green of the fir trees, in forms and shapes exquisitely crafted and daily tended to by specially assigned “florist-supervisors”, so that the work of the “teacher” does not wilt or get damaged in the slightest. From afar they look like gobelin tapestries laid on the ground as if to welcome the travellers. Of course, no one touches them.
In the afternoon we were on the road again. It had become a lot more obvious now from the surrounding landscapes that we were approaching the Valley. Big temples and institutes spanning hundreds of meters and all sorts of kierketaarns—perfectly round or ellipsoid little temples with snow-white, circular colonnades—had now taken the place of the giant blockhouses on both sides of the road and the shades of pastel colours had given way to a soft rose colour light.
The sky here is completely free of those dense, dark flocks of enormous flying vehicles and the thousands of platforms and terraces of the linsens here are scattered among parks and flower-gardens instead of the giant airports of northern regions.
Every now and then, you could see up on the hill the manor houses of the Lorffes, the leading representatives of modern spirit—still locked for this season—which, however, belong to the Rosernes Dal and not personally to them, and which later will be passed on to their spiritual successors, as Stefan informed me. Beside them you could see the hermitages of the Ilectors, deserted red granite monasteries built with severe contours, the personal silent retreats of the Emeriti.
What mesmerises the people of today even more than the beauty of nature, even more than the magnificence of the environment, are the toponyms and the childhood memories they evoke.
Silvia and Hilda had come to the Valley on Christmas Eve many years ago and Stefan had visited the great spiritual centre a few times a while after them, but all of them already knew the history of every inch of this land from when they were still at school.
If you take a glance behind the poplars that line the creek, behind the light pink wall of the monastery of the Ilectors in Delfia, you can distinguish the complex of the one-floor communal facilities of the hermits of Naade. Astrucci and Lain had told me about them in Markfor: four hundred years ago their predecessors were the original “founding fathers” of the Valley, the earliest scholars, interpreters and editors of the oldest texts of the Aidersian tradition. They still call them by the Greek word “eremites”, which means hermit.
SILEA, THEIR ARTIFICIAL MOTHER RIVER
While the hazy sun
was slowly setting, Stefan, who up to that point had been calm as always, suddenly grabbed my armed to show me a large river that had popped out from the West in the far in the background. “Look! Look!” he cried and simultaneously Silvia and Hilda started screaming in excitement “It’s Silea! Silea!”
I turned and clearly saw a very wide strip of water even from this far away. Had these shrewd people then changed the entire continental map? No river of this size had ever existed in these latitudes in my time! But Stefan told me that the Silea did not only belong to southern Europe and that it ended here after a long meandering, starting from the Mont Blanc in Savoy.
One of the oldest symbols of technological and economic consortium and political cooperation in Europe, the Silea passes through a number of countries and its waterfalls, dams and artificial bends—since it is an artificial river to begin with—had once given the peoples of Europe great prosperity thanks to the immense production of hydropower that supplied the entire continent for more than a century.
Later the discovery of new, significant energy sources undermined the importance of the Silea, at least as a source of energy. Nevertheless, in the hearts of the Europeans, the moral and political significance of its construction, its smooth operation for about a 130 years as well as its overall contribution stands as a reminder of the cooperation and solidarity that replaced the strife between nations, a symbol of the survival of the spirit of Altekirchen and of the importance of its articles of association, with the Charter of Nations being the emblem of the first, original, federal union of the Europeans.
And so the Silea remains intact, with its ports, its bridges and its stations of the Paneuropean Hydroelectric Energy Consortium—now of historical importance only—still located on the outskirts of the cities that the super-river runs through.
Wonderful colourful balconies decorated with all sorts of flowers continue to impress you for hundreds of kilometres, hanging above the bronze statues of the pioneers of the original federation: Milstone, Grueberg, Rickenmat, Vergina, and the hero and martyr Gustav Siovogia, who didn’t get to see his vision realised since he succumbed to the pressure too early and, one autumn night, tore his chest open with his own hands and died betrayed, persecuted and isolated.
We crossed the inconceivably long and wide Silea bridges once or twice. Thousands of people were gathered on the incredibly wide pavements of the bridges, either sitting on benches and talking or leaning on the railings and gazing at the water beneath them.
From the Albielle bridge, while staring far into the distance, along with the crowds of linsens that were ahead, for the first time I saw quite a few ancient small, hovering boats meant for private use- which looked like they had been plucked from very old garages or museums—flying velos and amphibian tricycles, wingless nano-helicopters, incredible vigiozas with old style turbines and all sorts of other comic flying vehicles that were trying hard to keep up with the newer and quicker linsens.
No matter how many times Stefan has reassured me that the transparency of the Forening—a kind of consortium or partnership—is solidly established and that the cooperative associations of the partners are guarantors of the safety of its products, I have unintentionally come to believe that even these perfect times may have some weaknesses. Those Cives—and they are many—who travel in such vehicles must either be capricious or unfairly treated, temporarily at least, by the Forening distributions, having to wait patiently for quite a while in order to get the vehicles that they deserve, vehicles that the rest of the Cives already possess.
The night had already fallen when the Silea, after an absence of half an hour, reappeared in front of us, illuminated, at the turn of the road. Only the night-time hours do justice to the true beauty of this river. “At this time of day, the Silea gains the sanctity of the Ganges in our eyes; we see it as the sacred river of Europe,” said Stefan.
Apulia, Erika, Terranova, Rodope, Great Poplar, Emerita, Fata Azzura, Teskera, Nydelfia, Egeria, Villafranca, Filiatura: dreamy outskirts of the Valley filled with Mindre Skoles (their primary schools), Vilenthens (their secondary schools), historical and ethnological museums, planetariums, conservatories and institutes, “serenity centres”, lecture venues, libraries and study rooms, temples, complexes of hermitages and huge amphitheatres. The greater surroundings of the Valley create an incredible spiritual atmosphere.
Stefan was striving to inform me about the history of each of these wonders and explain their deeper meaning to me as well as he could. He never left my side and didn’t stop answering my questions—even questions that I hadn’t asked yet. I noticed that he never once spoke to our friends. But they weren’t talking to each other either; they were both focused on their thoughts.
We continued travelling during the night without stopping anywhere. Thousands of people in their individual vehicles passed us by on that extremely spacious motorway, all overwhelmed with the same excitement and anticipation about their arrival at the Valley. In the middle of the night, in a true cascade of white light flooding the horizon, we arrived at the Valley of the Roses…
VALLEY OF ROSES: STARING AT THEIR SACRED CITY
Rosernes Dal, 13-VII
I sit and stare at the “holy” city of these times, exhausted from the charm of this mesmerising view, which can only compare with landscapes of dreams and fairy tales.
From the densely populated hill with the small and gentle gradient where we had settled in at midnight of the night before last, I cast a glance and realised that we had finally arrived!
An artificial basin that I had seen before on the Reigen-Swage stretched before us, full of rose bushes, temples and countless monuments, palaces with the famous crooked domes of Gratia Dei and Lysicoma: a giant garden city with a resident population of six million souls—including the regional lansbees that surround it—cut in half by the river.
There are no stars in the sky and this faint, diffused, cool light, that doesn’t seem to stem from anywhere in particular, gives you the illusion of daylight. I think I’ve said it before, but this artificial light of the current times looks like the aurora borealis.
I was mesmerised! I couldn’t take my eyes off of it! Fabulous treasures of topaz, amethyst, rubies and sapphires sparkle under this brilliant light! Each and every one of the semi-circular lines on the horizon was a wonderful, floodlit temple of art, a monument to the spiritual history of the last centuries. This is how they use most of their gemstones nowadays; to decorate their large cultural centres! They don’t belong to anyone! Their purpose is to satisfy the eye of their beholders!
“Look Andreas, look!” Silvia turned her face towards me and looked at me, fascinated by the image of the Valley that lay ahead. “Look! This is our earth, Andreas, our globe, our own planet even if we don’t believe our eyes!”
From up here you have a great view of the countless palaces of the Ilectors and the Lorffes, their observatories and all sorts of “radio wave stations” that carry the glorious names of the old researchers that they honour—like Striberg, Tegner or Feridi—the galleries that host their masterpieces, the temples of the Franciscans in Cordei a municipality of the Valley, and the Madonna of the Roses. And if you turn around, you’ll see a great number of planetariums, conservatories, gyms and swimming pools, everywhere on the periphery of the Valley.
Here are the galleries of Iberia, Latium and New Sabina with the famous ninety-eight heterogeneous but so fittingly matching capitals, each of which occupies several pages in the history of art. And there’s the temple of Human Suffering and the altars of Maternity, Research and Sacrifice, built in the memory of the thousands of scientists who were persecuted or crippled by radiation and their struggle against bacteria and viruses. And there are the premises of the Aidersen Institute—an entire city in itself—and the temples of the “dead religions”, each built in their respective style: Buddhist, Hindu, ancient Greek temples, synagogues. I even saw a temple for Zarathustra!
There in the background I can see the temple of
Love and Peace, the construction of which lasted for three whole generations, as I was told. Designed by the great Niemorsunt—a project of the 9th century, finished in 876—it was the fruit of sincere cooperation between the architects Olaf Keirl, Hilda Normanden and Alicia Neville.
To the east stands the Pantheon, with the arch-shaped halo that bears the famous here inscription “Honora Praecursoribus Aeternus”, written in golden light! There’s something magical about this inscription, apart from the golden light with which it was written; no matter where you are and from what angle you look at it—from above, below, far away or up close—you can see it as clearly as you would see it should you be standing right in front of it!
Next to it, the Temple of Poetry by Kekonen, also from the 9th century. Between the Pantheon and the Streets of the Palaces stands the temple of Damon and Phidias, a special project inspired by Yalmar and Rinarschield—the most renowned Lorffes of the 12th and 13th century, whose names and friendship marked their era—that was assigned to the architect Heimerstam for the perpetuation of the idea of friendship as a whole and not his own personal friendship.
To the west, temple-palaces devoted to Justice, Freedom and Culture and Virtue and Humanism and beside them the monument by Igor Bodurof that will forever recount the sacrifice of the twenty million people that took part in the unsuccessful attempt to colonise Mars. And here’s the invisible and intangible temple of God! You seriously cannot see anything! It is a place of religious trance and concentration, for the Lorffes alone, which only takes form if you are in it!
I also saw the temple of the Unsung Martyrs by Dean Kersteen made of synthetic ivory! Oh, I had read so much about him in the books that I was given! He was one of those who, back in the dark ages, had “inadvertently prophesised” what was coming. Most of the temples were built in the first two centuries of the Nojere, but their meanings were interpreted considerably differently after the Oversyn was obtained.