The Year 3000 | ✔️

Chapter 4

Departure from Dinamo and arrival in Andropoli. - General appearance of the city. - The houses, their construction and their architecture. - The squares of Andropoli. - The dynamic workshop. - The market. The arrest of a petty thief and justice.

Our travelers, having left the island of Dinamo, climbed into their aerotaco, impatient to reach the great capital of the world, and went to India. In a few hours they saw from above the Ganges, the ancient sacred river of the Hindus, and where from the height where they stood one could see a large city just below, which, from the place where it once dominated Calcutta, descended along the banks to the sea.

From there they raised their little boat to the north, where the immense chain of Imalaia stretched wide and majestic.

As they were approaching that chain of mountains, whose peaks seem to be silvered by the eternal snow that covers them, they spilled airborne from the air. They looked like big brown birds: there were of all sizes and all shapes and from all points of the horizon they were heading towards the same point; like the blood vessels, which from the entire periphery of our body are directed to the heart.

And Andropoli was in fact the heart of our globe, the center of planetary civilization.

Andropoli was founded in the year 2500 by Cosmete, an English citizen, the largest lawmaker in the world, who laid the foundations of the United States of Earth in a large assembly held in London in 2490.

At that assembly some envoys from all the countries took part, and after a discussion, which lasted for more than a month, it was established that the planetary capital was founded in Darjeeling, judged to be the most beautiful and healthiest country in the world.

The discussion was long, ardent and sometimes even impetuous, because many Europeans wanted the City of Man to be founded in Rome, which had been the capital of the world, the cradle of three civilizations, many centuries before.

The Americans wanted instead the planetary capital to rise in Quito, where the volcanoes had died down and there were no more earthquakes and where an eternal spring laughed.

The Asians of the Far East wanted it in Japan, the Australians would have wanted it in New Zealand; the Africans insisted on the central plateau of their continent; but in the end those who wanted Andropolis at the foot of Imalaia triumphed.

When Paul and Mary went there, that city had only five centuries of life and already had ten million inhabitants

More than a city, however, it could be said to be an immense agglomeration of a hundred cities, which descended from the mountains and hills into the valleys, all of which were then joined by land and airways.

Our travelers went down to Andropoli and took lodgings in an excellent hotel indicated to them by the Guide, which they had with them; hotel right in the city center.

That was the only part of Andropoli built with perfect symmetry.

From a large circular square, seven streets departed like the rays of a star, and the Government Palace, the Academy of Sciences and Letters, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the Temple of Hope rose proudly in the square. In the streets, which led out into the square, were the hotels, the department stores, the Archives, the Libraries; all the public buildings needed for the life of a great people.

It could be said that this part of Andropoli was the City of the public; while all the other immense expanse of houses welcomed the inhabitants, who had come from all the countries of the world, agglomerated, because of that irresistible instinct that man has in common with ants, with bees and with all sociable animals.