Meltdown Ophilion - Book One

18_KYPRO

The Evengale flew over the agri-zone to the east of Kypro following the river Keles-Tem as it flowed languidly towards the city. Gliding at eighty kilometers an hour at an altitude of five hundred meters the four teenagers had a clear view of the fields and irrigation canals, storage facilities and processing factories. Massive machines moved on tracks in the ground; they tended the crops with robotic precision, planting, irrigating, applying fertilizers and chemical compounds. Harvesting, transporting, packaging and preserving. Remarkably few humans were needed for this process; the agri-zones were populated mostly by machines.

The humans lived and worked in the com-zones. The agri-process was overseen by humans in control centers looking at com-screens. They monitored the machines, giving commands, adjusting parameters. Most of the humans in the agri-zones were mechanics. They tended the machines that tended their food source. There were transport pilots who brought the products - ready for consumption - to distribution points in the com-zones.

But, there were actual farmers too, who grew and tended plants without the help of machines. These were mostly mechanics who simply loved the feel of soil, the smell of growing things - the green and brown of a garden. These mechanics managed to live in the agri-zones and managed to stay under the radar of the Order. They had quietly and unobtrusively set up their homes within the operations compounds, in garages, storage facilities, even unused transports.

When they were not servicing the machines they tended their gardens. They had built small communities of like-minded green people throughout the agri-zones. Whole families cooperated and quietly did what they loved doing: growing things to eat, blossoms to inspire, herbs for tea to cure and relax nerves, herbs to smoke and dull pain, fungi to peer into other worlds. These connoisseurs of horticulture were, of course, carefully monitored by the Order.

The reason they were allowed to bend the rules and live outside the com-zone was the demand for naturally produced food on the tables of the Keneso. The High Circle already claimed the cream of every crop, but those were crops tended by robots. It wasn't the same. Human Love makes a difference you can taste.

Love had created a niche market for real food.

To the north of the eastern agri-zone was the clear outline of the Lin-Kaars ridge - a natural boundary for the com-zone, and facing it, on the south side of the city was Galtrion Rock - a mesa-like formation half the size of the entire com-zone standing three hundred meters above the surrounding plane and giving the Qonaar an ideal location for surveillance bases where they could monitor the city from the south as well as the surrounding agri-zones.

The megatropolis of Kypro rose before them in the horizon as they flew west – a bristling monstrosity of metal and glass and mineral panels engulfed in a permanent foggy haze of varying shades of gray and yellow. A steady stream of parasitical entities flew or crawled to and from the living-dead mass that Orion, Celi and Fel called home.

Jenna looked nervously out the front window of her small transport, watching their approach.

"Have you ever been in a com-zone?" Fel asked.

Jenna glanced at him for a moment then turned back to gaze at the com-zone. "Once," she said, "when I was younger."

"So, what did you think?"

"It was scary – so much noise and motion."

"Which com-zone was it?"

"Sabba-Lann."

"Hmm. One of the champion mrith teams is from that com-zone – the Panatrons."

They flew in free airspace till they neared the outskirts of Kypro, then Celli placed a request to the traffic com-link. She received an almost instantaneous automated reply. "We got an upper sky lane all the way in, guys," Celli announced, "52-G-7."