52 Project #46: To The End of the World (Patreon)

I first visited the Rismel Tower with my father when I was about 10. It wasn’t my first time out of the country, but it was the first time I’d visited the Risilon Archipelago. It’s a beautiful place, warm all year round, with incredible beaches, and the night sky with the Eye of Rusella directly above your head is one of the most amazing sights you can see. It’s easy to understand why the Risiloni thought of themselves as the destined rulers of the world for so long, with the Eye gazing down directly on them like that. And why they tended to be religious to the point of superstition long after most of the rest of the world had rejected the idea of theocracy. Even today, the Risiloni worship of Rusella is… well, let’s just say they have more temples per square hundredbody than anywhere else in the world, and there are serious political discussions undertaken from time to time as to what Rusella truly wants of them.

It’s also easy to understand why they thought of themselves as the political center of the world, when they are in fact at the geologic center of the world. The Risilon Archipelago sits in the bottom of the Bowl, the lowest point on Rusella-side. However, it’s not actually true that the Rismel Tower is literally at the lowest point in the world; if it was, we’d lose the entire ocean to Sister-side, because the lowest point in the world, by definition, has to be below sea level. It’s not even at the lowest point of the land; there are places in Risilon that are actually below sea level, and they use dams, dykes and pumps to keep those places from flooding. Risilon is an underwater mountain range, like most archipelagos, and some of the mountains are taller than others. The hub island of Pelagi is actually about twenty bodies above sea level in most places, and the rampart they built around the Rismel Tower is another twenty bodies. So even in the case of a tsunami, it’s unlikely that significant amounts of water could flood into the Rismel Cavern.

From the outside, the Rismel Tower doesn’t actually look all that impressive. It’s about twenty stories high, standing over the ramparts of the Rismel Cavern, but from the outside of course the cavern doesn’t look impressive either. My dad and I came in through the side that isn’t covered by the rampart, the main entrance. The atrium is beautiful, a soaring ceiling five stories up over a polished, reflective obsidian floor, with the forward walls made entirely of glass. Of course, the back and side walls have no windows because they’re buried in the rampart.

The elevator we took to the roof was entirely mundane, a traditional high-speed elevator like you’d find in any skyscraper, but I was so excited, it felt to me like something new and magical. When we reached the roof, the sun was already setting, and I could see the Eye of Rusella glowing down at us. My father had always told me it was only a nebula, but I felt sure I could feel some kind of presence looking down at me. After all, I’d always been told someone had built the world, so why not Rusella?

When I went to the edge of the roof, and looked down, I could see the Rizmel Cavern below us, a deep cavernous pit, and the faint glow of light at the bottom, so far away. I shivered, imagining what would happen if I fell. Which I couldn’t do, there were nets, but as a child I’m not sure I knew that. I thought I’d fall forever, that I’d go out the bottom and all the way out into space. I learned later in school that gravity doesn’t work that way; I might fall out the bottom from the momentum, but gravity would pull me right back in, and eventually I’d end up stabilizing at the center, after falling forward and backward multiple times.

My father and I got in the Bead, the clear, round elevator car that sits on the outside of the Rizmel Tower, facing the cavern. The Bead is actually two clear spheres, one inside the other; we sat in the inner one as it descended. The cavern was actually lighted, just dimly enough that I hadn’t been able to make it out against the growing sunlight at the bottom. We went past the Risilon subway – there was an exposed subway tunnel, because the Risiloni had decided that subway travelers deserved to be able to look down into the cavern. Down further, below the bedrock, we stopped at the docking station for the Mole People – who, to my disappointment, didn’t look like moles at all, just very pale humans with very large eyes. Further down, and we began to grow noticeably lighter. By the time we passed the Lava People – who aren’t actually made of lava, but they are made of rock – I felt like I was about to float.

I told my dad, who warned me not to take off my safety harness. A few minutes later I learned why not. Another child took his off, laughing, as he floated upward. At the center of the world, there’s no gravity, so you can float inside the Bead. But the inner sphere rotated as the gravity of Sister-side began to pull on us, and what had been a ride downward became a ride up. The boy who was floating a leg or two above the seats was suddenly a leg or two below the ceiling, in a graphic demonstration of relative motion that I wouldn’t appreciate the physics of until much later, and that pushed him several bodies above the seats. Which might have been fun, if we hadn’t been accelerating upward.  Gravity pulled him down, gently at first, until suddenly he weighed enough that he couldn’t float at all, and he fell. His mother, who’d been trying to catch him without unbuckling herself for some time, managed to grab him just in time to keep him from hitting the floor head first.

Now we were definitely heading upward. We saw the vast glittering caverns of the Crystal People (who are not made of crystal, but they do glitter), and made a stop at the chrome purity of the level of the Machine People (who are, in fact, machines.) There were more Mole People close to the top but these ones were furry. I didn’t even know they were the same as the Mole People on Rusella-side until my father told me. They still didn’t look like moles, though, more like very large cute baby monkeys with big eyes.

The city of Karjas in Melrenek has a subway system also, theirs even more complex and comprehensive than the one in Pelagi, but we didn’t see it; they hadn’t compromised the integrity of their tunnels by running one along the inside of the Rizmel Cavern. They had a station for Rizmel, of course, but no actual train or even track visible, so I didn’t recognize it for what it was at the time. And then we were outside, into the sunlight on Sister-side.

It being summer on Rusella-side, of course it was winter on Sister-side, so it didn’t strike me as unusual to see banks of snow. It should have, if I’d thought about the fact that of course the Rizmel Tower is at the center of Sister-side as well, and therefore, Melrenek should have been balmy and warm all year round. Except it isn’t; Sister-side is overall significantly colder than Rusella-side, and while the line that’s parallel to the sun’s arc is the warmest, it’s not warm enough to overcome how much winter cools all of Sister-side. What I thought was more notable – and much more disappointing – than the snow was the architecture. None of the flared gables or spires or glittering glass walls or complex stonework of Pelagi; from what I could see, everything in Karjas was a box made of gray concrete bricks, or poured concrete, or occasionally for some variety red clay bricks. Every building near the Rizmel Tower looked like what would have been a warehouse in a bad side of town, back home.

As we rose, though, I started to see beauty. Firstly, all of the flat roofs in Karjas (I found out later, in Melrenek in general) have reflective dark glass solar panels on them, to make maximum use of the sunlight they get. Then we rose higher, and I could see the ocean lapping at the harbor, only a thousand bodies or so away. And then a bit higher than that, and my eyes were drawn to the walls around the world.

The Bowl is much deeper on Sister-side, the walls much higher. At home I could see the eastern mountain range that bounded the world, barely, as a gray mound on the horizon in the distance, but there was no chance of seeing it in Risilon; the rise was too gentle, so there were far too many forests and mountain ranges and the hazes from heavy industry in the way. But on Sister-side the Bowl rose so steeply and the walls so high at their edges, I could see the boundaries of the entire world.

Not while I was still in the Bead, where my vision was cut off by the bulk of the Rizmel Tower behind me and I could only see to the south and west; there, I could see the endless glittering ocean that fills the Bowl in those directions, broken only by archipelagos here and there, all the way to where the land rises out of the ocean at the edges of the Bowl, and keeps rising until it forms the walls around the world. Once we reached the roof of the Tower, and I could see in all directions, I saw how huge the continent of Melru was, stretching back north and east, dipping low enough in some places to see lakes or even vast seas; I saw the other continents of Sister-side, distance turning them into squashed lines of land sticking up from the water, and I saw the walls on all sides. There was no haze in the air; it was winter, and therefore not sporing season, and the people of Sister-side have been much more conscientious than Rusella-side about keeping the offgases and ash from burning fuel from entering the air. Probably because it’s so cold that they burn a lot more fuel, and if the haze from your smoke drifts over your neighbor’s lands and blocks the sunlight, they’d be willing to go to war over it.

All around, wherever I saw land, I saw the giant colorful mushroom-trees that make Sister-side so notable and alien, round caps and plate-tops rather than the triangle of a conifer or the cloud of a deciduous canopy. There were a few green forests, but not many. In winter, snow covered the fields, so everywhere I looked I saw glittering white. It was amazing, and I highly recommend it. There is no point on Rusella-side where you can see the entire Bowl; the fact that you can see all of Sister-side from the Rizmel Tower on the Melrenek side is humbling and awe-inspiring.

After that view, Karjas itself was somewhat disappointing. Of course, the food was different, the clothes were different, the customs were different, but all of that had been true in Risilon as well, and Pelagi’s architecture is beautiful no matter what level you look at it from. Whereas from the ground, Melrenek architecture is deeply, deeply boring and utilitarian.  And it’s a bit of a system shock to travel from your home in the summertime, go to equatorial Risilon where it’s balmy and warm all the time, and end up in the middle of the winter.  Now I knew why my father had insisted that we pack our warm clothes, but I was still much too cold in Karjas.

I will say this. If you’ve spent your entire life under the Eye of Rusella, there is nothing so unsettling as a sky where it’s just not there. When night fell in Karjas -- after my father and I had slept half the day due to time lag – I looked up at the sky, saw the Seven Sisters instead of the Eye of Rusella, and part of me wanted to cry. I’d never been raised to believe in Rusella – my father was pretty clear on the concept that gods don’t exist, and I knew the Eye was just a nebula. But the sky looked so wrong without it.

My father comforted me. Reminded me that this alien world had always existed; I was just seeing it for the first time now. Reminded me that the Eye of Rusella still shone down at home, and we would return there, soon.

We did return, and I never forgot that trip. I’ve made it many times since then. But things have changed so much. I can’t forget the bombing of the Bead, and the year it took to rebuild, and the months that everyone was trapped on whatever side they were on because they didn’t trust their security procedures for the cargo elevators to handle passengers securely while there might be terrorist bombers around. I remember when the plague struck, and all the finger-pointing between the nations of Rusella-side and Sister-side as to which side it came from and who infected who. I remember the years of the Spore War when a particularly fast-growing mushroom tree managed to get over to Rusella-side as spores on a visitor’s clothes, and the economic and agricultural damage it did to Risilon.

Now, you stand in a long line. You go into a booth and change clothes, bagging up the ones you were wearing to start, and they go under sterilizing radiation while you get a shower, and then they make you put on plastic disposable clothes to make the transit. Supposedly they will deliver your clothes to you on the other side, but things are lost so often, the roofs of both towers are now covered with merchants who’ll sell you clothes and snacks. There are interminable security checks at every stop along the way, but you’re not allowed to get out and explore unless you actually got a ticket for a trip to that floor and then a second trip to the far side, which is twice as expensive despite covering the same distance.

The second to last trip I took, I didn’t even look out the window. We were packed in like pieces of pre-fabricated furniture in a box. My seat was on the lower level, and a tall man was directly above me; nearly kicking me in the head; I could feel his boot swoosh past the top of my hair. I was in an aisle, and I couldn’t have seen out the window if I’d wanted to, because my seatmate with the window wanted to take a nap on the two hour trip. Oh, and it took a lot longer; my father and I were on Sister-side in an hour. Now the Bead is slower and makes a lot more stops. Costs three times as much money, even factoring for inflation, and the service is horrible. You can’t peer off the edge of the roof anymore, either; the merchant stalls take up so much room, we’re all more or less forced into the center, directly into or out of the Bead queue.

And nowadays we have so many cables to the other side. Cables on the outer rim, running along the sides of the walls of the Bowls. Cables going through holes we drilled all the way down that aren’t large enough for humans, or even the smallest of Crystal People, so only the Machine People and the dumb machines we make on the human surfaces can service them. Now we can communicate instantly with people on Sister-side. We can see through their windows. We can share recipes. You can look at a view from one of the resorts on the edge of the world.

Which is the only place you’ll see it. The people who used to live on the edges? Displaced. Now there are mining concerns, scientific expeditions, and expensive resorts. And that’s all. The edge has been taken away from the people of the world, made a luxury for the wealthy or a resource to be stripped.

The world is smaller. We can talk to people a thousand miles away, people on the bottom side of our world, people on the bottom and a thousand miles away… but we can’t go anywhere to experience the magic I felt that day.

Or so I thought.

But on the last trip I was on, I sat next to a little girl. I had a window seat, but I traded with her so she could have it. She had never been on this trip before, and she was incredibly excited, bouncing up and down in her seat, even with the seat belt on. I told her about the different layers and the different kinds of people who lived in them. She was going to visit her aunt, who had moved to Sister-side for work, and who’d be meeting her at Melrenek Station at the top of the tower (or bottom, depending on how you look at it.) She hadn’t had a chance to go to the edge of Risilon Station and look down, but she’d seen pictures of it. And she’d seen many pictures of Melrenek already, and her aunt’s home in Bestog, and the night sky with the Sisters and no Eye of Rusella.

For her, this trip was full of the anticipation of seeing for real the things she’d already seen in pictures. She was traveling alone, so there was the thrill of being an unaccompanied minor, out on her first major trip by herself. There was the excitement of getting to see her aunt, who was apparently her favorite relative outside of her parents. She didn’t remember when you didn’t have to stand in a ridiculous line, and change all your clothes. She’d never experienced this trip in comfortable clothes that belonged to her rather than scratchy, baggy plastic disposables. For her, this was the way it was, and it was magic.

Did the people who first rappelled down the Rizmel Cavern, before the Bead was even built, think the magic was lost when they had to ride down an elevator instead of making the journey with climbing ropes? Did the people who dug down into the earth, and first experienced the light of the alien sky of Sister-side, think the magic was lost when there was an entire cavern built that anyone could climb down with ropes, rather than the thrill of opening up a hole themselves to a new world?

We have a passage between the two Bowls. We know, now, that it is two Bowls and not a convex surface on the other side. We know there’s an atmosphere like Rusella-side and that there are people, humans like us, surface dwellers, who must have climbed over the mountains at the edge of the world, not even knowing for certain that gravity would continue to hold them as they descended, who went there and made lives and cover the surface now just as we cover the surface of Rusella-side. We know that Mole People must have found passages through the mountains on the edge, or maybe natural passages that no one but them know about now, from before they lost their fur, that the ones on Sister-side are actually closer to their evolutionary origins than the ones on Rusella-side now. We know about the Crystal People and the Machine People.

We know so much. And when you first discover something new, it’s magic. The longer you live with the knowledge, the more it turns into the everyday. Something expected, normal. Magic no longer.

The magic is still there. It will always be there. What changes is not the wonder of a passage to the other side of the world, but us, and our knowledge and understanding. As you grow old it becomes harder and harder to find magic, because your mind will classify anything you are used to as mundane.  Science fiction writers have to write tales of spherical worlds, where there’s no edge and you can just keep going forever, because they can’t write fantastic tales about the other side anymore… we know what’s there now. So they imagine worlds that don’t exist, or might exist somewhere. They imagine worlds where there are two round worlds circling each other, and one is smaller than the other, like a mother and a daughter. They imagine worlds where the sun has a dark partner, a reflecting mirror that comes out at night and turns the darkness of the night into slightly less darkness, lit eerily by dim cold white light.  Because the everyday world around us isn’t enough, anymore. Because we want to imagine strange and different objects in the sky, or different shapes the world could be in, to get back some sense of magic.

We don’t need to. You know that? We don’t need to. The magic is still there in the everyday world. The fact that we can travel to another side of the world is no less stunning and strange for the fact that there are people who do it every fiveday. We can grow mushroom trees in sealed arboretum habitats, and see them on our days off, but that doesn’t make the world that’s covered with them less wondrous. And there are people, people over there for whom our green conifers and deciduous trees are alien, and our foods are different, and our architecture is strange, and the Eye of Rusella is a new and amazing sight rather than the thing we see every night of our lives.  There are people who aren’t just atheists – they don’t believe in Rusella because they were never raised to believe in Rusella. They have their own gods, that they embrace, or they reject, and Rusella’s just not even within the scope of their imagination except to say “And the people on the other side worship a nebula that’s only visible from their side, because they think it’s the eye of a god.” And that is also magic. That there are people for whom everything you know is alien and strange, and everything you consider unusual and stunning, or terrifying, is their everyday life.

Think about how your world appears to people who are unfamiliar with it. Think about the unfamiliar world and how it must feel to the people who live with it every day. The wonder is still there. The magic is still there. But you need some empathy with people who aren’t like you, who haven’t had your experiences, to see it. And if you can do that, you can see that your own everyday world still contains magic. Even if you never go to the Tower, never ride the Bead to Sister-side. There is still magic all around you.