Fine Structure

by qntm

Like every other square kilometre of planet Earth, Science City has been everything, frequently all at once: a vast engineering complex, a Holy Land, an abandoned deathtrap pile of shattered skyscrapers, a fortified haven for two thirds of a million stateless fugitives, an agricultural commune, a solar farm, a financial centre, a major calculation node for The Project, the political centre of an empire spanning entire continents, a warzone and a strategic nuclear target. But above all things it has been a spaceport, on and off, for almost eighteen thousand years. Every civilisation growing up in the shadow of Science City has its own ideas about what it all means and what should be done with the most impressive constructions - worship them, occupy them, blow them up and carve them into pieces - but sooner or later almost everybody gets around to the idea of duplicating and refining the dreams of their predecessors. Who originally built it, even Anne Poole can't remember-- the first time she led an occupation force on it, it was already a pile of rusted wreckage and half-completed ark ships left over from the previous Crash, overgrown with vegetation and crammed full of terrified families and ranged weapons. All she knows is that every time she comes back it has grown, buildings bloating and gradually merging into bigger superstructures housing tens of thousands of people, and always a halo of increasingly ambitious launch platforms surrounding it.