Mother City

Hesta suddenly recalled the anthropology she had read in Director Elma's lounge, remembering Mina Delid and the fossilized femur she had mentioned. She suddenly realized that back when she was at the abbey, she had touched upon the door leading to before the Great Blackout Era, but she had overlooked that keyword at the time.

"The legacy of the Golden Age, does that refer to books?" Hesta asked.

"Far more than that," Liz said, sitting down at a nearby table. "Our current world is divided into sixteen major districts. Do you know why it's sixteen?"

Hesta shook her head, and Liz began to explain.

"At the end of the Golden Age, war pushed the entire world to the brink of destruction. Resources were scarce, and the population plummeted. After the Great Blackout Era descended, within less than a century, all public facilities were destroyed. Buildings were burned and bombed. You could no longer see schools, hospitals, churches...

"Without antibiotics or vaccines, a sudden epidemic could wipe out almost all newborns in a community. The maternal mortality rate during childbirth reached 15%, and the child survival rate was less than 40%.

"After the loss of the education system, literacy rates rapidly declined with each generation. The books in libraries gradually lost their meaning for most people. They were taken one by one to be burned for warmth, to survive the winter. But when summer came, people were helpless against the heat. Just two weeks of 40-degree temperatures could be a disaster for the elderly over 70 in a community...

"Everyone believed the world was ending. The lingering elderly reminisced about everything in the civilized world, trying to call for the reconstruction of order. But the young people who grew up in the ruins no longer cared about these things. They had their own jungle logic and were obsessed with re-dividing territories... Human technology regressed to an agricultural level in less than two hundred years—until the world's first Mother City appeared."

"...Mother City?"

"Yes," Liz said, her voice filled with warmth as if mentioning her homeland. "It was a dreamlike city, covering an area of 34.12 square kilometers, emerging from the ground like a seed. The vast city was empty but perfectly orderly.

"It was a relic of the past civilization, sustained by both nuclear and solar energy. Approximately two thousand robots were constantly responsible for the maintenance of the entire city. From the well-preserved buildings of the Mother City, people finally realized that the legends of the Golden Age were not mere fantasies—it had truly existed and descended among them like a miracle.

"After that, sixteen Mother Cities appeared sequentially around the world within a year. Relying on the libraries, research institutes, and automated factories within the cities, although many of the technologies in the Mother Cities remained black boxes to us, we only knew how to operate them, not their principles, let alone replicate them... but humanity had at least rekindled the flame of civilization.

"It is thanks to these sixteen Mother Cities that we have reached today. Districts 1 through 14 are named in the order in which the Mother Cities emerged. Districts 15 and 16 are more special; humanity has not yet found a way to enter these two Mother Cities without damage, so they have been set aside for now."

Liz looked at Hesta. "The Great Blackout Era began with the 'Star-Seizing Night' incident in 3812 and ended with the arrival of the first Mother City in the spring of 4001. It was a brief yet long dark period in human history—now, every major district is working diligently to decipher their Mother City's technology. However, their focus is always on energy and military industry; literature is just a trivial embellishment..."

Liz's explanation ended with a sigh full of regret. She then led Hesta to a world map.

Hesta first saw District 3, as it was highlighted with a raised effect on the map. She reached out and lightly touched the raised lines representing mountains, then slowly shifted her gaze nearby.

"What are the blue areas? Why are they so large?"

Liz let out a laugh. "That's the sea, Jane."

She looked at the map. "We're not far from the sea, only about an hour's drive—it's just that the process for obtaining travel permits is too complicated. If there's an external assignment opportunity later, I can take you to see it."

Afterward, Liz pointed out the different areas on the map one by one. Hesta listened silently, as if she were truly understanding this world for the first time today.

She saw that District 3 covered a vast area of 11.47 million square kilometers, making it the second-largest district by land area on Earth. However, its habitable land was only a mere 640,000 square kilometers—the rest was "wasteland" waiting to be developed.

According to Liz, the population distribution in District 3 was extreme. Tanyi, the fourth-largest city in District 3, housed about one-third of the district's population.

And District 14—in Hesta's imagination, District 14 should have been separated from District 3 by ten major districts. But no—District 14 was directly adjacent to District 3.

However, District 14 was also very large. If one were to calculate the absolute distance between their current location and District 14, it was still very far. Its total area reached an astonishing 24.73 million square kilometers, covering almost the entire north-south span of its continental plate. Its habitable land area was 1.86 million square kilometers, almost three times that of District 3's habitable land.

She saw the vast snowfields in the northern part of District 14. On that permafrost, there were almost no symbols representing towns or roads.

The world map hung quietly on the wall, yet standing before it, Hesta felt as if she were being swept away by a torrent.

At first, she tried to find Duanming Alley or Saint Anne Abbey on the map. Liz told her that those locations were too small to possibly be found on a world map.

So, she turned to look for Severn Mountain, only to see a long mountain range. It gradually rose from the seaside in the northern part of District 3 and slowly extended inland, stretching to an astonishing length.

Liz laughed again, saying that Severn Mountain just happened to share the same name as the mountain range. The area occupied by Severn Mountain outside Tanyi City was still too small to be marked on this map. If she really wanted to see Severn Mountain on the map, she could look it up on the electronic map later.

Hesta was stunned. Earlier, when Liz spoke of the function of literature, she had been somewhat bewildered. When they talked about space exploration during the Golden Age, her reaction had been indifferent. But at this moment, as she silently faced the land and sea on the map, she distinctly felt a certain awareness of this world being shattered.

She thought of the place she had lived in the past, of the towering mountain ridges and endless peaks outside the abbey.

Severn Mountain, was it still small?

Then how large was this world...?

Hesta tilted her head back.

She gazed at the map of the world, feeling her own insignificance for the first time.