Chartreuse || ONC 2022

▪︎ Digi Log 3 ▪︎

Nova's vehicle sped across the dunes toward the looming cylinder towers of Neo-York. The city was ablaze with neon lights of every color on the spectrum, and the triple silver moons created an otherworldly backdrop for the postmodern metropolis.

"The city is stagnant at night?" Mina asked. She was nestled in the cramped backseat next to Ava-1. Saito, being the tallest, sat beside Nova in the front.

Nova's blue hair shimmered as she bobbed her head in a nod. "That's right," she replied. "During the daylight hours, Neo-York is in a constant state of travel, always on the very edge of the sun's reach. The Collapse, you know. At night, the city is still. We have lunar panels that recharge our thrusters and propellers from the beams of the three moons."

"The 'Collapse'?" Mina asked. "Is that how the people in Neo-York refer to the slow death of the sun?"

"Yeah," Nova replied. "Conversation is simpler if it has a name."

"I must confess, the science of it alludes me," Saito stated.

"The nearest star is dying," Ava-1 clarified. "Collapsing in on itself into an event horizon. And what is a dying star? Class? Anyone?"

"A black hole," Nova supplied.

"Precisely," Ava-1 concurred. "Black holes have a significant gravitational pull which, in turn, alters the output of energy. Therefore, this sun is too hot during the daylight hours; it would bake the city. So, the city moves to avoid direct rays."

"What happens when the star collapses completely?" Saito asked. "This planet will be plunged into frozen darkness."

"By my calculations, that won't happen for another three and a half millennia, give or take a couple centuries," Ava-1 said. She scanned a gigabyte of stored data within her left eye and made a series of instantaneous calculations. "Another star will be born from the destruction of the old one. And humanity will have completed their subterranean city near the planet's core long before then."

"I wonder if I'll live to see that," Mina murmured in rhetoric.

Nova shook her head in incredulous wonder. These three defied imagination.

The vehicle cruised up a wide ramp and passed beneath the electronic gates that served as an entrance to the city. A huge intangible sign made of neon pixels manifested before them. The glowing letters read:

Welcome to Neo-York
Big Sister is Watching You

"That's not ominous at all," Mina remarked.

Nova drove the vehicle straight through the sign, and the pixels scattered and dissipated.

Saito gazed out his window at the towering skyscrapers that surrounded them. "Big Sister must have quite the investment in sonic elevators. Buildings such as these would outstrip the stamina of even my legs."

Nova nodded. "Neo-York has the best hyper-speed lifts on the planet. In the past few years, the city has grown exponentially. We can't expand out, so we expand up."

"Why not out?" Mina asked.

"The city's hover base," Nova answered. "It's made of adamantium, the most indestructible metal in the known galaxy. Blessing and a curse. While it can't be damaged, it also can't be altered. The circumference of the base is what it is, and what it will always be."

"Interesting," Saito mused. He rubbed his chin with his knuckle and continued to study the cylinder towers.

Ava-1 scanned the sky for surveillance drones. She noticed one as they zoomed beneath a glowing beacon that read "Micro-Tokyo," then spotted another hovering overhead as Nova slowed the vehicle to take a sharp corner.