Page 9 of Sparktopia
Most of the buildings along the slope have square or rectangle-shaped main levels and a dome on top—which are decorative and a point of pride for everyone in the city. Especially when you’re walking the wall and get a good look at them all. Tau City is exquisite from all angles, even down-city. But from the wall, from the air, from the bird’s eye view—it’s like looking down on perfection.
Some of the domes are deep and tall, while others are shallow or nearly flat, more like caps. Some of them are the color of the plaster—bone, or buff, or sand. But most are dull, sun-bleached shades of light blue. A few domes are trimmed in fancy hand-painted tiles, but most are ringed with thin, gold circles.
Not all the buildings are this shape though. Some are tall cones, almost obelisk-like, and mimic the shape of the sandstone formations that poke up from the desert landscape on the other side of the city walls, beyond our sheltered valley between the hills.
Even if I tried, I doubt I could dream up a more beautiful city. Of course, I have nothing to compare it to since the world beyond our walls ceased to exist more than a thousand years ago, after the wind took over the world and covered it in sand.
We call that event the Great Sweep, a time of extreme chaos that necessitated building protective walls around the city. First, to prevent the sands from covering us all up. But then, after the winds died down, it was to protect us from the predators that seemed to be everywhere, all at once. Very dangerous creatures that wanted to eat us.
That’s why we needed the wall.
But no one thinks about that story very much anymore. It was so long ago. And not a single person, myself included, has ever seen anything on the other side of the wall but sand dunes and far-off mountains.
There are no monsters who want to eat us.
But no reason to go beyond the wall, either. Because we’re all that’s left. The last city standing after the Great Sweep covered the world in sand.
In school—before I pledged myself to the god in the tower and my life turned into one long stream of lessons in etiquette, and culture, and tradition, and spark—I learned a little bit about why the Great Sweep happened. It had something to do withthe speed of rotation of far-off planetary bodies and how they interacted with our planet and moons. I don’t remember all the details, but I do know there were five moons before the Great Sweep and now there are only three.
A fascinating fact, in and of itself, but the historical bits that always piqued my interest the most were how my ancestors were able to harness the spark inside us and use it to make fantastic things. Like trains. There used to be train stations and trains where there is now desert. But all that old spark tech is in ruins and mostly covered by the dunes, which covers just about everything outside the walls of our little oasis.
There is nothing visible to the naked eye outside our little valley rimmed in towering red rock formations except sand dunes and a faint, rippling outline of mountains in the distance. I’ve never seen a stranger come to the wall asking to be let in.
And while there have not been any exploratory expeditions across the sand in my lifetime, there were hundreds in the early days, just after the Great Sweep.
No one ever came back. So… maybe they found a better place out there? Or, more likely, they just died.
It’s just us. We’re the last.
Our spark, the power that runs our city, comes from the god in the tower now.
He keeps us safe.
He keeps us fed and watered.
He keeps us happy and healthy.
And that’s why, when the god in the tower demands Maidens come to him every ten years to keep us all alive, we send those Maidens right on in.
It’s just one girl. And she’s a volunteer, isn’t she?
One girl in exchange for safety and spark to power the greenhouses and field irrigation so we can all eat? One girl in exchange for hot water and forced-air heating during the frigidnights? One girl in exchange for peace of mind so that we, the people of Tau City, might live long lives enriched in comforts and culture?
Yes. We all agree it’s worth it. That’s why there are seventy-five Little Sisters living in the Maiden Tower dorm at this very moment.
Of course, all of us enter this little arrangement thinking we’ll be number two, don’t we? Or ten, as it stands right now. None of us ever come in thinking we’ll be number one.
Still, I have to take my hat off to Imogen Gibson. She didn’t even squeal. Didn’t even break her smile when her name was called as our number one. And that same night, as the bells were ringing, she stood in front of that massive black door that leads into the God’s Tower with her back straight and her chin up and her spark on full display. It was so bright, it could light up the world.
And while the ritual is terrifying in the moments leading up to midnight on Extraction Day, after Imogen walked through, and the bells stopped ringing, and all the power shortages in up-city ceased to exist, and all the coffee machines worked perfectly once more, and the lights stopped flickering, and the elevators stopped skipping, and the faucets had hot water once again—we, the good people of Tau City, forgot our fear and started, once again, to count our blessings.
Because the spark from just one girl was enough to set things right.
Or so we thought.
Then the bells rang again, two years later, eight years early, and it was a shock. But we did have warnings. Nothing massive, but there were small signs. Machines struggled to work, lights crackled and dimmed, and a few heaters in the orchard gave out, causing an apple shortage that fall.
Well, we all thought.Maybe the city has grown too much and we’ve been demanding more spark from the god than we thought?
