Chapter 1:
That Unreachable Infinity
“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” - Arthur C. Clarke
Somewhere, a couple thousand meters above the surface of the Earth, a tiny, invisible, drone no bigger than the size of a finger, releases a small amount of water vapor into the atmosphere.
Then, as if on cue, another similar drone half a meter away does the same.
And then another.
And another.
And another.
One by one, each of the hundreds of drones in the area released its fair share of water vapor, letting the cold atmosphere of the troposphere work its magic with mother nature to form a large nimbus cloud.
Nearby, another group of drones repeats the process, forming another rain cloud.
And another
And another.
Until slowly but surely, the sky is filled with a blanket of dark grey clouds, blocking out the sunlight above. Only then do the hundreds of thousands of tiny drones in the sky finally begin to release more water vapor into the clouds, combining with the millions of pre-existing ones to form a single water droplet that makes its way through the cloud, falling down onto the massive metropolis known as Amsterlin.
Like many other metropolises in this world, the city was decorated with towering buildings and skyscrapers that could be seen from miles away. Billboards and massive signs of various shapes, colors, and sizes hung from the sides of buildings at all sorts of angles, each promoting all kinds of products and services ranging from drone repair shops to the newest beauty product.
Sleek and futuristic trains rush along the sky roads that weave throughout the city. Below, pedestrians walk about the crossroads and sidewalks, each one of them carrying along their support drone — a simple companion that virtually everyone had — and being careful as to not be hit by the occasional hoverboarder zipping by. The scenery itself wasn’t too different from the vibrant metropolises of the 21st century over 200 years ago — a clean and modern city, bustling with color and innovation.
As the rain from the artificial clouds begin to descend upon the city, one by one, umbrellas pop open from the support drones, shielding their human companions from the gentle rainfall. Above, a large billboard that broadcasted the news and announced important reminders comes back from their scheduled break, as a female reporter appears on the screen and loudly speaks above the city.
“Goooood morning citizens of Euracia! Here is your friendly reminder that we have our bi-weekly rainfall scheduled for this week! Remember to check your local schedule to see when rainfall is expected to hit your city, so you can make the necessary preparations for it! In other news —”
Aaaaaaaaaargh! Shut up, shut up, shut up! I made a bad mistake!
A girl with short, fluffy, light brown hair and amber eyes adjusts her glasses as she rushes through the crowded streets and quickly makes her way down the stairway to an underground subway station. Her small support drone — a spherical, black-and-grey little fellow themed after a raccoon and no bigger than the palm of her hand — frantically follows behind her.
Once they’re finally safe from the rain, the girl slumps down against a nearby wall, out of breath from all the running. After catching her breath, she shakes the excess water off her forest-green waterproof jacket, wishing it had come with a hood to protect her hair.
“Beep - boop!” her drone beeps as it recalibrates itself after finally catching up to her, “Celia, this is the — beep — third week in a row you forgot to equip me with the umbrella feature for the scheduled rainfall. Would you like me to set another reminder to equip the feature before the next one?”
Celia gave her drone a mild look of annoyance before she let out a tired sigh.
“Yes, Tabby, please set another reminder,” she says, looking around the station for the time board to see when the next subway was arriving.
Another minute until the next train, she thinks to herself as she takes off her rain stained glasses to clean off the water droplets with her shirt, at least I got one thing right today.
She looks over to Tabby, watching him set up the reminder for the next week inside his system. Despite always having a reminder set, she still kept forgetting to equip the umbrella on time.
The average support drone could only hold up to 5 special utility functions — specialized mini tools attached to a disk drive that could be inserted into the drone — however, not only was Tabby an older model that could only hold up to 4 functions, as an engineering student, she needed all the slots for other things. Things such as a dust blower to clear up dust from her various projects, which she had conveniently modified to double as a hairdryer after forgetting to equip her umbrella so many times.
Without even having to ask, Tabby began to gently dry her hair, slowly floating around her head to get to the necessary angles. Whilst he was doing that, Celia quickly flips through her backpack, making sure nothing inside was waterlogged before tapping her ear to make sure her Neurolink was working.
The Neurolink was a small black ear attachment that automatically translated foreign languages to the language she set it to. It was one of the few things besides support drones that practically everyone had on them, and it was especially important if you’re a college student because students and staff alike came from all over the world.
Just then, her thoughts were suddenly cleared up by the sound of the next subway arriving as Tabby quickly wrapped up drying her hair. Celia jumps up from where she was sitting and stretches her back before rushing over to the set of railings that blocked off the platform that passengers used to board and exit the train. As the train slowly comes to a stop, she quickly taps her ID along the scanner to get through the railings, swiftly slipping between the doors of the train before the inevitable crowd showed up.
As she waits for the train to depart, she sits down along the benches, placing her backpack next to her as Tabby follows up and lands on top of it to rest. A nearby TV along the walls of the train continues broadcasting the same news channel from before, while people continue to slowly board the train.
“Recent developments in nano drone technology aim to reduce the light pollution that the drones provide,” the same lady reports, “despite being invisible, each little drone lets off a tiny amount of light in order to communicate with each other, which, when combined with the countless number of other nearby drones, causes enough light pollution to block off the stars at night. The newer drones will hopefully reduce the amount of light each drone produces, so that we may hopefully be able to see the real stars again. Here is Vitoria Santos, one of the lead researchers of New Genesis, the main company leading the development of the Tropodome, coming to you live from Gran Andes to give you more insights.”
Right, Celia thinks to herself as the doors close and the train starts to move, the stars we see at night aren’t real.
The entire sky across the globe was covered by a thick layer of invisible drones that spanned across the entire troposphere, filling it up all the way into the bottom levels of the stratosphere. The “Tropodome” was what they called it, and the concept was heralded by a company known as New Genesis almost 200 years ago when the world got together to find a way to reverse the process of something they called “global warming”.
The solution they provided was almost too good. Drones would fly up into the sky, injecting molecules that triggered chemical reactions that broke down the carbon dioxide plaguing the skies. They soon realized that if they could accomplish this on a greater scale, they could eventually harness the power of the weather itself, and so over a course of a decade the Tropodome was developed, allowing humanity to provide water to places that lacked it and favorable weather conditions to farmlands to increase food yields to end world hunger.
The only caveat to this was that humanity had to give up on the skies. Airplanes and other aircraft that flew too high had to be decommissioned because they risked damaging the drones, and space programs across the globe had to be shut down. In the pursuit of peace and happiness on Earth, they had to give up their ambitions to reach past the stars. It was a decision that the majority of humanity willingly made and continued to uphold to this day.
Celia was sure that somebody else out there also disagreed with this decision. Surely people were tired of seeing the fake stars that the drones generated, right? Surely someone out there wanted to see the real stars too. And maybe someone else out there was also tired of building stupid robot prosthetics and wanted to build a rocket, just like her.
As the train exited the underground tunnels, she looked out the window taking in the beauty of the impressive city skylines that humanity improved and built over the years. With the cancellation of space programs and airlines, the money had been redirected to improving the infrastructure of the cities. Roads were made walkable, cities were made reachable, and housing was made accessible to people all over the world.
Nah, who am I kidding? She wondered admiring the tall buildings and skyscrapers, why would anyone want to give up something like this just to go to space? They’ll say “what’s so impressive about space anyway?” and maybe they’re right. What made space seem so captivating to me anyway? Maybe I actually don’t want to go there after all…
Despite thinking this, she knew she was lying to herself. Deep down inside she hoped she was wrong about what other people thought. She really, really, hoped she was wrong.
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