Observer Oriented
The airship drifts below the cloud layer, slowly turning from the south and beginning to head east towards the coast.
“Well, there it is kid. What do you think, was it worth it?”
He looks through the window trying to see past their reflection and the deck lights. Something. Something in front of them. Dark against the rising moon. Angular. Block upon block upon cylinder, capped with domes, crowned with pillars and spires. All joined with buttresses and flimsy bridges and strung with threads and ropes. Perspective fails and it looms. Too close. He takes half a step back, a sudden intake of breath. Too close, they’re about to…
The Helmsman’s uniformed arm clasps his shoulder.
“Easy lad, it’s still a way off yet”
“How… How did…?”
“It’s common enough. At night with almost no lights, there’s nothing to judge it against. I have to remind myself to believe the instruments and not my eyes, sometimes”
The Helmsman walks over to an instrument screen, touches some controls.
“C’mon over here, you can use one of the docking cams. See for yourself, it’ll give you a light enhanced view. Not as good as seeing it in daylight but, we’ll be down and unloading long before then.”
He walks over to join the Helmsman, reluctantly turning away from the dark mass outside the window.
“Pan with this, zoom here and that’s the reset. There you go”
He zooms, the picture steadies and shows featureless black shipping containers and black dome tents clustering along the waterfront. Movement catches his eye and he pans, zooms closer see’s… “Jesus!” …a Roll-on/Roll-off ferry cruising into the gap between two ‘containers’. Scale snaps home, the blocky container buildings and domes must be at least 10 storey’s high.
He pans and zooms wildly. Rank after rank of blocks stacked on top of each other all of them 10 storey’s, capped with more 10 storey domes, taller narrower cylinders and cones. Level after level climbing upwards. Buttress towers 100 storey’s high support bridges half the height of the blocks and long enough to look slender. The threads and ropes are roadways coiling from place to place, level to level. He zooms. None smaller than 6 lanes wide. Zooms out. Towering over all of them are spires and barrel shaped pillars, tall enough to dwarf the bulk of the buildings like skyscrapers over lesser structures in a regular city.
So many levels, so may ways it ties together. He can grasp the smallest scale – individual buildings and roadways, even see how they interconnect but as soon as he zooms outwards it quickly becomes too vast. Too empty. Too dark. The mass of it matt, featureless black.. Scattered domes and cylinders appear transparent and lit from within. Although backlit by the moon it is hard to be sure if they are illuminated at all. The only light’s he’s sure he can see are what he takes to be signs and navigation lights on roadways and roofs
“Where are the rest of the lights? Where is everyone? Is this one of those deserted areas?”
“Hell no, this is fucking Santa Barbara kid! It’s just… well, there’s no windows that’s all.”
“What! What do you mean, there’s no windows? I’ve seen them. In photos!”
“The outside’s smooth apart from the entrances and that. Didn’t your uncle tell you? All the windows are only on the inside, they all look inwards”
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