by David Archer
A pair of innovative real estate developers had decided to attempt the project after a hundred and twenty-five square miles of valuable real estate became worthless, great portions of it burned to the ground during the riots prior to the Great Disaster, turning what had once been the Kankakee area into worthless rubble. The only remaining value in this land was the Kankakee River, billions upon billions of gallons of freshwater in a steady flow that could be managed for a number of purposes.
Roger DeWalt and Dennis Williams had specialized in building large shopping malls, and some of the biggest malls in the country had been their projects. Each of them, however, harbored the dream of building the first truly functional arcology, and while the insurance companies were whining and crying about the massive costs of the Kankakee Metro fire, these two men quietly offered to take the ravaged land off their hands. Since it would take years to sell off the thousands of individual parcels, it wasn’t long before a coalition of insurance companies was formed to negotiate the sale of the entire area to DeWalt and Williams.
Within thirty days, DeWalt and Williams announced their plan to build a fully self-contained arcology on the land, managed to raise and borrow more than two hundred billion dollars for the project, and began taking bids for construction of some of its most important features. One of those was a four-stage hydroelectric dam across the river, just a couple of miles northwest of what had once been the Kankakee River State Park. With some judicious excavation of the riverbed and its environs, this would create a reservoir that covered nearly a million acres to an average depth of more than forty feet, while at the same time producing enough electricity for a city the size of New York. People laughed, calling DeWalt and Williams fools for building such a large electricity-generating facility in such a rural area.
Another bid they accepted around the same time was for the removal and burial of the debris that remained from the fires. Very few buildings were still standing at all in the area, and those succumbed to the indomitable will of bulldozers and hydraulic cranes. Within only a couple of months, an almost perfectly square parcel of land more than eight miles on a side was essentially bare. The Kankakee River snaked its way through the middle of it, from just below what had once been the town of Aroma Park to the northern edge of the Kankakee suburb of Bourbonnais, with the grounds of the former cities of Kankakee and Bradley sandwiched in between.
Next came excavation. Millions of cubic feet of soil and rock were removed and piled outside the area. Most of it would eventually be used in the production of a newly developed form of concrete, from which a truncated pyramid, square at its base and eight miles on a side, was built to stand almost thirty-four hundred feet tall, with a flat top that measured more than six miles per side. It was constructed like a massive parking garage, with one hundred floors spaced thirty feet apart. Each of these floors was made of steel-reinforced concrete four feet thick, and incorporated channels that allowed for electrical wiring, water piping, air ducting and even waste and garbage removal. Pillars of concrete and steel were spaced two hundred feet apart, each of them nearly twelve feet in diameter, and each of the concrete floors was divided into squares that incorporated a spider web of steel arches embedded in the concrete to allow them such great, open spans.
The ground floor was filled with soil, and was divided into sections that could be used for agricultural purposes. Every critical form of farming that was necessary to provide food for a community could be found there, and DeWalt and Williams happily hired agricultural innovators, who designed techniques and equipment for producing high yields from the available croplands and pastures.
Still other sections, particularly those alongside the river that ran through the base of the massive structure, were devoted to recreation. Enclosed within the ground floor was a curvy stretch of the river that was more than ten miles long, and chock full of fish and other wildlife. Ducks and geese were often seen swimming or flying through, following the river, and its banks were lined with manicured trees and bushes where squirrels and rabbits and raccoons soon learned not to be afraid of people. It was an almost outdoors experience, with the ceiling overhead painted to resemble an open sky. The concealed, indirect lighting was specifically designed to dim slowly according to the position of the sun in the real sky outside, and computer-controlled projectors even allowed late-night visitors and campers to watch very genuine representations of the outside night sky.
The only structures to be found on the ground level were restaurants and specialty shops that catered to the recreational aspects along the river, law enforcement/fire-and-rescue stations interspersed throughout both the recreational and agricultural areas, maintenance garages for equipment, and offices used by supervisors and employees of the various sections.
The climate on the ground level was like a perpetual spring, with the temperature always hovering between seventy and eighty degrees Fahrenheit. This was accomplished in winter by means of air circulation through geothermal ducting, while the massive structure itself tended to keep the area cool in the summer. Even the water in the river warmed up as it flowed through, though it was only warm enough for swimming during summer months.
At various intervals, escalators and elevators led upward, and the contrast between the ground level and the second floor was almost like stepping from one world into another. The second floor, and every floor above it, was essentially an independent city. There were commonways instead of streets, spaced through the grid of pillars that held up the floors above, and each of those pillars stood in the center of what amounted to a three-story building between floors. These buildings housed shops, stores, restaurants, factories, hospitals, theaters, schools, residential apartments, hotels, professional offices—absolutely anything you might find in any city, anywhere in the world, could be found on almost every floor above the first one. Each of these floors had its own local government, with a Mayor and City Council and Police Department and Fire Department. Many of the internal buildings were linked by walkways or bridges that spanned the commonways, and some even connected the second and third floors completely with other internal buildings around them.
Residents and business owners could either lease or purchase their spaces, and there were some areas of specialization within these cities. For instance, there were only three community colleges in the entire arcology, but the University of America had a presence on almost every level. Some of the levels seemed to be particularly designed to follow a certain culture, such as Italian, or African, whereas others were the typical American-style melting pot that had become synonymous with Western culture.
Back on the ground floor, at each corner, shipping and receiving docks stayed busy twenty-four hours a day, as imported items were brought in and exported items shipped out. The vast majority of the freight came and went on rails, using the piggyback system of mounting shipping containers onto railroad flat cars. Massive robotic cranes that moved on their own special rails carried them quickly from train car to dock and back, so that the trains barely had time to stop.
All in all, this arcology was one of the greatest accomplishments of human endeavor. The river provided electricity, fresh water, recreation and more, even powering turbines that kept fresh air moving throughout the building at all times. The design allowed almost everything the residents could ever need to be produced right there, although some raw materials still had to be brought in from outside.
DeWalt and Williams suddenly found themselves to be the darlings of the world, since concentrating the populations of the world into arcologies would mean that great portions of the planet could be allowed to revert back to nature. Arcologies could even be expanded, either outward or upward, so that they could grow with the needs of the population they served. By the time the Kankakee Arcology was finished, the two men were already supervising the construction of seven more: two in the USA, one in Great Britain, two in Europe and two more on the African continent. Russia and China were working on their own, using plans purch
ased from DeWalt and Williams.
The age of the arcology had arrived, and it was here to stay.
FOUR
The AI suddenly swelled up to occupy the screen, snapping Carson out of his reverie. “We have reached your destination, Professor,” it said. A moment later, he felt the little vehicle come to a halt and settle to the floor just before the door opened.
“Thank you,” Carson said automatically, as he stepped out of the egg. It had stopped precisely in front of the door that led into the offices of the history department, and he was pushing the door open even before he got his other leg out.
“Professor Pace,” called out the receptionist, “your first appointment is here to see you.”
He nodded as he went past her desk. “Thank you, Susan.” It was only a few steps to his own door, and he saw the student, Wendell Minard, sitting on the bench just outside.
“Wendell, come on in,” he said. “Sorry I'm running a little late.”
“Oh, no, Professor,” Wendell said. “You're actually right on time, I was just running early. My last class got out early. Professor Jenkins had some sort of family emergency at home. I just came on over and sat here to wait for you. I hope that's okay.”
“It's fine, Wendell,” Carson said. “Come on in. What can I do for you today?”
Wendell followed him into the office and took a seat. “Professor, I'm not having any problems in your class, but I've got one in another class that you might be able to help me with. You know I'm studying law, right? Well, Professor Dieter has presented us with a situation that isn't covered in law books, and he wants us to figure out how we would approach it if we were to be placed in a position to have to judge the case.”
Carson's eyes went wide. “That sounds like an intriguing approach to education,” he said. “Since you're here, I get the impression that it may be a case taken from real history?”
Wendell grinned at him. “Yes, Professor,” he said. “It goes back to one of the big wars in the century before the GU. According to the scenario, forces from our side, which are called 'the Allies,' have captured an enemy prison camp and determined that the doctors there have been conducting horrible, inhumane experiments on the prisoners. Our assignment is to determine whether these experiments constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or simply crimes against individuals. Can you think of any case in history that I might be able to use as a precedent?”
Carson nodded without hesitation. “Josef Mengele. He was a physician at the Auschwitz concentration camp for Jewish prisoners in Germany in the 1940s, during the Second World War. He conducted horrible experiments on the Jewish prisoners, without any kind of anesthesia or any regard for their health or safety. Most of his subjects died, but shortly before the camp was captured, he escaped to South America. He managed to avoid capture for the rest of his life, but then he drowned while swimming in the surf off the coast of Brazil.”
Wendell frowned and wrinkled his brow. “I'm afraid that won't help me much, if he was never captured and brought to face charges.”
Carson held up a finger for patience. “Now, now, don't give up so easily. Even though he was never captured, the courts that were involved all determined that his crimes were against humanity. Other Nazi officers were charged with war crimes, but Mengele, had he ever made it to trial, would have been accused of the most horrible kind of crime there could be.”
Wendell asked a few questions, but Carson's answer seemed to satisfy his needs. The entire meeting lasted less than twenty minutes, and the student went away quite happy and certain that he knew the correct answer to give to his law professor.
Carson's next appointment wasn't due for more than half an hour, so he decided to catch up on some of his record keeping. He uploaded notes and grades information from the holo-tab to his cloud files, then used the holoterminal on his desk to activate their integration into his student records. The terminal was nothing more than a holographic display that he could manipulate in the same way that he could do with the holo-tab, by simply moving data from place to place with a finger, or speaking instructions or dictation.
He had just finished bringing his student data up to date when his holo-tab notified him that his next appointment had arrived. He called out, “Enter!”
A young woman stepped through the door as it opened automatically, and he recognized her as Juliet Simmons. Juliet was one of his better students, consistently ranking high in his class.
“Juliet,” he said, “it's good to see you. Have a seat, and tell me how I can help you today.”
The girl smiled and took the seat in front of his desk. “Professor Pace, I was wondering if you might be willing to help me out with a little project of mine. I'm working on a novel about the development of the GU, and I'd like to make it as historically accurate as possible. I know that a lot of information is available in the cloud, but I've listened to enough of your lectures to know that there are things that didn't seem to make it into the official histories. I'd like to be able to incorporate some of those things into my story, and you struck me as the ideal consultant.”
Carson smiled. “Well, I'll confess I'm flattered,” he said. “If you've got specific questions about any of the events that took place, it's probable that I might know a few things that are a little hard to come by for the public. What's the basic plot of your story?”
“Well, I'm trying to get a feel for the people who were at the top of the decision-making process. One of the most interesting details I've come across is that none of the authors of the GU Mandates were professional politicians, but I know they consulted with a lot of political figures in developing their plans. Can you give me some idea of where to find the names of those consultants? That would be a big help, but I know there are lots of other things that were factors in the development of the Mandates.”
Carson leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers in front of his face. “Hmmm,” he said. “Cosgrove Morrissey, the director of the Global Unification Standards Commission, actually told all of the Commission's Members to avoid speaking with any current national political leaders, because he was afraid that their views would taint the Commission's report. Some of them talked to politicians, anyway, although it appears to me that they did so in order to make sure they avoided issues that were troubling those leaders. For example, India Radcliffe was the woman in charge of looking at Western dissatisfaction with sovereign governments, and she consulted with former presidents and prime ministers like Bush and Clinton in the United States, Trudeau and Harper in Canada, and Tony Blair from England. She didn't ask for recommendations from them, however—she asked them what their greatest regrets were, and particularly about issues that inflamed the population against them. Harper, just to give a clear example, had won the Prime Minister's election on the promise that he would push for an elected Senate, rather than one that was appointed. He made the statement that the Upper House was essentially a dumping ground for 'favored cronies of the Prime Minister,' but then he appointed Michael Fortier to both the Senate and the cabinet, so the opposition insisted that he was reneging on that promise. That was one of the things that led to a vote of no confidence against the parliament and shadowed his career from then on. India took from that example that whatever representative body the GU might eventually have should always consist of representatives that were elected by the populace of the subject nation from which they came.”
Juliet smiled brightly. “Okay, you see, I didn't find any reference to that anywhere. Little things like that can make the story not only more factual, but eminently more enjoyable for the reader.”
Carson shrugged with a grin. “I can probably come up with more such anecdotes,” he said. “Just give me a little time, and I'll be happy to compile some things for you that I think you'll find interesting.”
Juliet leaned forward, and Carson found himself suddenly presented with an interesting view of her cleavage. “Professor, can we find some time to just sit and talk about these thing
s? I'd really like to make notes as you speak, you give these things so much life when you're talking about them out loud. Writing them down would take some of that away, I think.”
Carson carefully kept his eyes focused on her own. “Juliet, I don't get a lot of free time to spend sitting around and talking, I'm afraid. I'd be happy to make some notes and provide them to you, however.”
The girl pouted, letting her bottom lip protrude forward. “Oh, I'd be happy to work around your schedule,” she said. “We could even meet during lunchtime, or after work? Maybe over dinner, or I'd be happy to have you stop by my place so I could make dinner for us.”
Carson leaned forward and widened his eyes slightly to indicate displeasure. “I'm afraid that's not possible, Juliet,” he said. “First off, my lunch breaks are usually taken up with staff meetings, and when they're not, I use them to get caught up on my own work. As far as dinner goes, I'm in an exclusive connection with my Domestic Partner, and I'm afraid she wouldn't take kindly to that. As I said, I'll be happy to provide you with notes, but that's all I can do.”
The girl continued to pout for a few more seconds, but then broke into a smile. “Darn, I hate it when I meet a man who just isn't corruptible,” she said. “Okay, okay, I'll happily accept the notes, and I'll have to find some other way to thank you for them than what I had in mind. But if you ever change your mind…”
Carson softened his expression and smiled, but shook his head. “Thank you, but I won't. I truly am flattered, I don't want you to think I'm not; you are a beautiful young woman, but my heart and everything else about me are committed to my DP. I'll email those notes to you within a week.”