It was a city for everyone, built by everyone and filled with people from all walks of life. There were no districts or boroughs, just an amalgamation of people living and working for the betterment of the city and those inside it.
It was a city for everyone, though the native population was less than a thousand. All the rest were travellers of some kind or another just looking around or waiting out whatever bad weather made it past the Köppen Shield (allegedly 98% atmospheric moisture proof, more like mostly-snow-proof-sometimes).
In spite of all the cracks in the infrastructure, the constant let-down in the tech that was meant to make life perfect, or as close to as possible, it was still considered one of the great Safe Havens against the dramatic weather shifts and the mass exodus of all nearby life that followed such patterns.
Meg was one of hundreds of bio-engineers that the city employed to hunt the lower levels and shield limits for nesting animals, with orders to kill whatever they found and bring the bodies back to be recycled into fuel for the city. It made her think of her home as some gigantic slumbering leviathan, sustained by its own parasites feeding their weak to the behemoth they thrived on.
After eight years on the job she still took no pride in it, despite the latest campaign to make them all feel better about being glorified mice catchers, among many other, friendlier creatures. Fatima down in Sub-Sector 84.6 claimed she'd found a crocodile living in one of the thermal pools last week. Turned out to be a rather large water monitor but still, it had been a hard kill and Meg was just glad it hadn't been her.
In spite of all her complaints she still did her job as best as she could, unlike the rumoured few who smuggled these animals deep into the city instead, selling them in pet shops and creating burdens, resource wastage and countless bio-hazards where fuel should be instead.
Though the penalty was three weeks exile to the camps outside the city walls, a harsh sentence that unsurprisingly few could survive, the rules were still broken and humans remained empathetic to the point where they'd rather risk the collapse of a Haven than shoot a few birds down.
Lately Meg's job seemed to be more about persuading her colleagues to do their damned job rather than doing it herself. Still there were some who were just too stubborn to see the greater picture, the shortage of food and medicine that plagued any settlement outside of a Haven, a reduction in the population, the decay of the multi-tiered travel rails all ending in the collapse of global travel and the isolation of all Safe Havens.
Millions would be stranded and left to rot while others would be trapped in their dwindling supplies, gradually outnumbered by predator species bred to survive the harsh outer world. All for a sense of empathy that some people held too strongly to in the face of everything around them.
Meg fixed what she could, talked people into the greater picture wherever she could.
The rest were good as bio-fuel, as far as she was concerned at least.
So long as the city ran, nobody asked about missing persons.
It was a city for everyone, though the native population was less than a thousand. All the rest were travellers of some kind or another just looking around or waiting out whatever bad weather made it past the Köppen Shield (allegedly 98% atmospheric moisture proof, more like mostly-snow-proof-sometimes).
In spite of all the cracks in the infrastructure, the constant let-down in the tech that was meant to make life perfect, or as close to as possible, it was still considered one of the great Safe Havens against the dramatic weather shifts and the mass exodus of all nearby life that followed such patterns.
Meg was one of hundreds of bio-engineers that the city employed to hunt the lower levels and shield limits for nesting animals, with orders to kill whatever they found and bring the bodies back to be recycled into fuel for the city. It made her think of her home as some gigantic slumbering leviathan, sustained by its own parasites feeding their weak to the behemoth they thrived on.
After eight years on the job she still took no pride in it, despite the latest campaign to make them all feel better about being glorified mice catchers, among many other, friendlier creatures. Fatima down in Sub-Sector 84.6 claimed she'd found a crocodile living in one of the thermal pools last week. Turned out to be a rather large water monitor but still, it had been a hard kill and Meg was just glad it hadn't been her.
In spite of all her complaints she still did her job as best as she could, unlike the rumoured few who smuggled these animals deep into the city instead, selling them in pet shops and creating burdens, resource wastage and countless bio-hazards where fuel should be instead.
Though the penalty was three weeks exile to the camps outside the city walls, a harsh sentence that unsurprisingly few could survive, the rules were still broken and humans remained empathetic to the point where they'd rather risk the collapse of a Haven than shoot a few birds down.
Lately Meg's job seemed to be more about persuading her colleagues to do their damned job rather than doing it herself. Still there were some who were just too stubborn to see the greater picture, the shortage of food and medicine that plagued any settlement outside of a Haven, a reduction in the population, the decay of the multi-tiered travel rails all ending in the collapse of global travel and the isolation of all Safe Havens.
Millions would be stranded and left to rot while others would be trapped in their dwindling supplies, gradually outnumbered by predator species bred to survive the harsh outer world. All for a sense of empathy that some people held too strongly to in the face of everything around them.
Meg fixed what she could, talked people into the greater picture wherever she could.
The rest were good as bio-fuel, as far as she was concerned at least.
So long as the city ran, nobody asked about missing persons.
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