In a remote corner of the star-stitched nothing, a crimson colossus stands besieged by an endless black ocean. It is a city, a concrete organism of ritual motions. Here, augmented life coexists with suspended death.
A troubled ontogeny
Orphaned colonies
The Sisyphean Burden was a seeding ark: a continent-sized spacecraft tasked with starting distant human colonies. After an eternity of travel, it caught up with its probes in a rough part of the galaxy light-centuries away from humanity’s Chthonic cradle. This was the Nergal System: a few worlds around a white star, with an eventful history, no doubt.
Nergal II was a lonesome world with no natural satellites; a harsh womb for Neuropolis’ conception. More than ninety percent of the surface was an endless black ocean christened Abzu. Countless island chains pockmarked the planet, and volcanoes broke the waterline like pustules ready to pop. Violent monsoon storms raged above, intense auroras stained the sky, and the refuse of past eruptions filled the air.
The Burden housed massive tanks of cognitofluid: an obscene feat of technology hosting an artificial mind. The liquid intelligence of the spacecraft surveyed the system and littered its planets with a host of factory monoliths. Right after landing, these monoliths began converting the infertile worlds into a substrate for life.
First, they set up a synthetic ecosystem of tether lines, all-purpose drones and a buzz of radio signals. This was a time when monitoring probes flooded the virgin skies, and excavator behemoths tore up the land. Nanite sludge festered on barren soils while drone legions worked with twitching appendages of manipulator fluid. Voidfaring messengers coordinated the whole affair with millisecond precision.
Atmospheric enhancements and microbial inoculations followed. The monoliths introduced a curated list of species to the environment. People came last, corralled into prefabricated habitats warmed by the waste heat of Sisyphean artifacts. The human population of Nergal II settled on the barren back of the Kur Shield, the only substantial landmass of the planet.
After a century of tender care, the Sisyphean Burden recalled its drones and monoliths and abruptly departed. Most of the planetary colonies collapsed in years; their stillborn ecosystems quickly reverted to the parched deserts and frozen wastelands they sprouted from. On Nergal II, however, life endured. The ancient organisms, sourced from the Burden’s genetic archives, settled into novel niches. Now, glistening grillfish nibble at the edges of continent-sized algal blooms. Mondwhales in heat sing underwater serenades. A flock of torpedobirds roost atop a guano-coated islet, and amphibious slugs climb twisting thalli of stranded waverafts.
The reason for the Burden’s sudden disappearance, to this day, remains a mystery.
Growing pains
To the human eye, the Burden’s ilk were incomprehensible processes clad in transparent metal; worthy of no less than awe. Mechanical envoys taught people farming, engineering, history, art; everything needed to survive and thrive. When they disappeared, the guidance of the Expectant sect instilled purpose in the colonists. They hoarded every morsel of technology the Sisyphean Burden did not care to dismantle. Monuments were erected honoring the ark, awaiting its return.
Some, the Forlorn, felt betrayed by the Burden, an entity that cast them aside. And when their leaders started hoarding the resources of the colony, they spoke up against the Expectant. The ruling regime tried to exterminate the germs of dissent, but this only further fueled the hostilities. After the mutiny at Ganzir Gulf, the inevitable could no longer be stalled and the colony was flung into a civil war.
Like a scalding fever, the conflict burned through most of the planet. Cluster mines tore into warships, poison gas filled water-logged bunkers, homes melted under a sleet of bombs. The ambush at the Strait of Bitu and the clashes of the Gentle Octant Theater gave bitter highlights to the periodic flareups, echoing the ancient wars of Chthon.
For the Forlorn, biotechnology was an obsession. They manufactured organs to mend their injuries and gestated embryos to refill their ranks. Their greatest invention, however, was the brain-thrall: a fusion of gray matter and stolen machinery. With this new technology, the Forlorn could revive their mounting casualties, and turn the tide of war. In the last moments, when Forlorn forces seized the Expectant’s command pyramid, the fortress’ capstone catapulted into orbit with the enemy generals cowering inside.
In the end, only ruins remained; nutritious soil for a new civilization. Infrastructure had to be built, traitors executed, memorials erected, order restored. The tattered war staff organized the remaining population into a technocratic hierarchy. They created many of the institutions that now regulate the colony. This was the birth of Neuropolis, the Crimson City.
Urban anatomy
A superficial look
Neuropolis stretches across the Kur Shield like an inflamed tumor, every building the same oppressive shade of red. The megacity clutches to the very substrate by supports driven hundreds of meters underground. Streets, like gashes, cut through the mass of concrete, and elsewhere mountain-sized constructions tower over their surroundings. The roots of buildings are dark from grime, while the higher levels fade to pink and then disappear inside the milky haze that hangs above. Even when wind drives it away, the mist always creeps back into the sky.
The monumental, ever-stretching architecture presents a suffocating sight. The dominant style is plain and utilitarian yet baroque, unequal and fractal-like. Bridges and balconies break the straightforward silhouettes. Slit-like windows perforate exteriors, and chunky buttresses lean against massive walls. Vulnerable functional parts appear intentionally exposed, like spilling organelles. With the tight tessellation of the city grid, the recurring building silhouettes and the limited selection of premade concrete modules, patterns repeat at every level of magnification.
Its transportation network gives shape and structure to Neuropolis. It ensures the metabolic flow that keeps the whole system alive. Massive freighters crowd the Atramentum river bisecting the city; tugboats flock to them like thrombocytes to a wound. Elevated rail lines carve up the sky, connecting distant neighborhoods and transporting millions. Tracheal tubes penetrate buildings, removing waste and restocking dispensaries. And above the vast ocean, orbital launchers besiege the sky like umbilical cords tethering the planet to the enveloping void.
Multi-purpose behemoths proliferate and metastasize throughout the city. These mass-produced high-rises are the structural and functional unit in much of the city. Each is a town in its own right with an internal ecosystem of apartments, offices, workshops, clinics, restaurants, schools and much more.
The outskirts are home to titanic industrial installations. Nuclear furnaces catabolize heavy elements, while turbine fields harness the vigorous wind. Distant stone quarries spit out megatons of raw material for other industries. Automated factories secrete countless hormone- and neurotransmitter-analogs. Tissue starters engulf organic scaffoldings, while cell cultures grow patiently in ultra-sterile facilities. Smokestacks belch white fumes, adding to the thick haze above. Outside the city, lush croplands dominate; endless straight roads are the only hint of metropolitan encroachment. Vegetables thrive in towering greenhouses above the sedimentation tanks of industrial swamplands.
Artful details enrich the urban scenery. Cramped groves, terraced parks and hanging gardens; a mosaic of plant life breaks up the fabric of interconnected skyscrapers. Lacunas of green tranquility amidst a jungle of red, and a sanctuary for the city’s meager wildlife. Puzzling sculptures punctuate open squares and give substance to heated conversations. Every day, sandaled feet cross city plazas and tread on monumental mosaics only discernible from above.
Far away, like so many unweaned pups, isolated communities subsist on tangled radio waves and lengthy supply routes. For days at a time, a semi-submersible research station is draped in lighting storms, while icebreakers cleave through the thick white crust of the polar regions. Long chains of blinking buoys mark off unseen underwater assets. And even in space, there is a host of satellites accompanied by a few crowded orbital stations.
Truth to material
The base components of Nergal II are still present, albeit changed and exploited. Solar radiation floods the surface. Rainwater soaks into earth, skin and stone. Submarine volcanoes create new land on the Abzu. Soil is saturated with fertilizer and stripped for the treasures underneath. The meandering river has been straightened and pushed behind a dam, its flow tapped to flood the cropfields on command. Air was long ago made breathable.
Cold artificial light clogs the city streets and building interiors. This ever-present glow renders the city in a ghastly atmosphere. Holographic ghost images flutter in the rain; their washed-out colors and dramatic motions draw attention to obtrusive notices and played-out propaganda. True night only descends during blackouts brought on by unprecedented storms.
The crossbreeding of metals yields an endless selection of alloys. Buildings, vehicles, devices and bodies are all laced with them. Due to the limited supply of fresh ore, most metal is sourced from industrial scrapyards. The rest is excavated from the seabed and, lately, mined from asteroids.
The red bioconcrete mimes the porous composition of bones: structurally strong and materially unwasteful. Vast printing yards generate house-sized concrete blocks in a matter of hours. Finished pieces are hauled off by giga-trucks to building sites throughout the city. Bioconcrete is self-healing, and many older constructions are covered in a lattice of scars. The crushed bulk of demolished projects is piled into embankments along the coastline, where the ocean bleaches them pale.
Insulation, packaging, furniture, clothes, utensils; most everyday things are made from endlessly recycled ecoplastics. The base polymers are either left monochrome or tinted to pop against the red scenery. Notable varieties include performance duroplast, faux enamel, imitation wood and gossamer filament. At the end of their lifecycles, ecoplastic products are milled and reshaped into something new. What is not reclaimed is packed into staggering compost heaps and broken down by mushrooms.
A swarm of creatures crawls about the towering architecture, and many more fill its entrails. This negligible biomass of plants and animals, people and thralls are mere viral particles to the immense organism that is Neuropolis. Originally brought here from distant Chthon, now evolved, engineered and augmented, this urban ecosystem grows in tandem with the natural one.
Physiology of the everyday
Sites and pathways
Life in Neuropolis starts in an artificial womb: a see-through ecoplastic bag lined with synthetic tissue and implanted with harvested zygotes. The contents of the quasi-amniotic fluid are closely monitored, and abnormally developing embryos are culled at this stage. At birth, the womb is cut open, the fluid drained, and the child wiped dry. The infant receives a name and is sent to a nursing facility.
From an early age, children receive both physical conditioning and mental nourishment. Bodies are shaped in bathhouses, gymnasiums and by a plethora of hormonal treatments. Teaching thralls regurgitate century-old curricula in airless classrooms, and aged professors give lectures to packed amphitheaters. Evaluations are constant, and the paths to the most esteemed positions are choked by daunting examinations.
Adults are complex and composite creatures. Their flesh is implanted with artifice and grafted with lab-grown tissue. Some are reinforced by obvious inclusions of alloy and plastic, while others bear faded seams only. Ink stretches across skin like parchment script initialized by whalebone and precious stone. Buried underneath, highways of data resurface in gilded interfacing points yearning for the plug of a cable. Tall foreheads top statuesque faces with camera eyes and mouths full of faux enamel. Form-fitting breeches hug tender silhouettes, and see-through tunics frame firm volumes. Beige and mint are currently popular tones; a respite for the eyes. Some people complement the look with hangings of metal and ersatz opal.
Mundane labor is taken care of by unflinching brain-thralls toiling away in the background of everyday life. And yet, adults are expected to work, as it is said to cultivate dignity, humility and loyalty. People become clerks and archivists, athletes and entertainers, engineers, attendants or publicists. Every citizen receives a monthly viaticum: food, housing and some universal currency. The generousness of this stipend depends on several factors such as developmental grade, type of employment and neurological record.
Much of life happens in the interiors that fill buildings like a network of temperature-controlled vacuoles. Textured wallpaper, imitation wood and glazed ceramic hide the raw concrete. People lounge on multipurpose furniture, while projectors cast images on glass room dividers. Glow panels and electric candlelights accompany nighttime pursuits. Plastic figurines, like house spirits, keep watch from shelves and tabletops. Stale incense smoke and the smell of last night’s dinner crowd a small room. Handmade pillows, a freshly picked bouquet, terrarium for a mouse; details make each space tenderly personal.
The sum of the parts
Neuropolis speaks an old Chthonian dialect inherited from the envoys of the Sisyphean Burden. People stare enthusiastically but seldom approach without proper rite. Once acquainted, however, they are eager to share intimate details and recite lengthy anecdotes. Conversations are accompanied by theatrical gestures and empty formalities. Quarrels are frequent, as the populace is divided by myriad rivalries.
People pursue diverse appetites. Glazed Achilles-fish, fermented mushroom soup and pickled seaweed are some of the most popular dishes. Libraries host an excess of digital media, among them heirlooms from distant Chthon. Crowds gather around knife sparring rings, boating canals and debate halls. Concerts and orgies drown their venues in cascading instrumentation and an orchestra of moans. Lovers’ hands explore each other under clinging rain tunics. Hedonists microdose hormones, inject anodyne spikes and vaporize oracle crystals. And, for the half-awake psychonaut, countless virtual worlds offer solace from reality.
In Neuropolis, family is a voluntary arrangement; a formal bond between people sharing resources and connections. In exchange for the political and financial support of high-profile members, others offer their company, skills and loyalty. Families gather in private and observe unique rituals. Members use distinctive surnames and cosmetic details to set themselves apart from the rest of society.
Families pool into tribes along ideological lines. The largest tribes incorporate millions of people and hold sway over the Senate, the colony’s legislative organ. Here, every day, a thousand bickering seniors meet under a darkened glass dome. They interpret the chaotic predictions of the dead and draft an economic plan for the colony in the next cycle. In turn, factories and workshops match the production quotas allotted to them.
The air of judicial courts is tense with debate. Those who are unequipped to defend themselves can appoint a skilled orator to speak for them. The Vigil is the colony’s immune system. Its gendarmes patrol the streets flanked by menacing thrall-hounds. Like clouds of coughed-up phlegm, peacekeeping flycrafts drift above the ocean hunting for pirates. Distant artillery batteries sit scattered across the Abzu, idle for now.
Exhaustive necropsy
Post mortem
For an existence of relative ease, one must serve in death. When a citizen dies, a few of their belongings remain with their family while the rest is repossessed by the state. The family circulates their name and ensures that they are treated well in the afterlife. The body is torn down for useful parts, and the brain is resurrected as a thrall:
- Shortly after death, a team of surgeons arrives at the scene. The brain is the first thing they recover. It is doused in a heavy drug solution that halts its degradation and the further loss of cognitive capabilities. Other organs are also taken and preserved till later reuse. Any leftover tissue is processed as organic waste.
- If the brain has no obvious defects, the previous identity is flushed out, leaving only a mature texture behind. The organ is wrapped in a conductive mesh that interfaces with cortical regions, while nerves and deeper areas are implanted with electrode bundles. Finally, the fully-rigged brain is placed into a reinforced capsule. This is the birth of a thrall.
- Through a chemically mediated learning process, the brain is conditioned for undeath. It is instilled with logic pathways, mantric axioms and esoteric control protocols. The thrall is assigned its first role based on the needs of the colony. Its symbolic journey to the afterlife is accompanied by a troop of veiled officials, after which it is initiated into the Nether and enshrined in its resting place.
Thralls can be separated into two groups:
- Motile thralls are capable of movement. They have sensory stalks and sonar bulbs to perceive their environment. Instead of mimicking the limited human form, they come in countless bizarre shapes. Ciliate street cleaners squeeze into tight crevices. Modular pleasure thralls diffuse pheromone clouds while they prepare stimulating instruments. Many-jointed spiders wade through rice paddies, carrying bloated fertilizer tanks. On the open ocean, monumental bulkers mount the waves, and below, humble drones tail living divers. Many of these servants are embellished with trinkets and markings, giving them character beyond their orthodox frames. Docking stations provide lesser thralls with nutrient and battery top-ups, while true titans carry onboard reactors.
- Sessile thralls are interred in stationary server-tombs. Some are boxes built around a single brain capsule; others are buildings in their own right, housing thousands of thralls beneath their concrete shells. City-wide, plastic kiosks dispense directions and advice. Robotic limbs and conveyor belts move in a strict choreography on lifeless factory floors. Accountant systems sift through mountains of data recorded by scribal thralls, while other brains are rented out for general-purpose computing. Families stop by to honor their dead and leave all manner of knick-knacks at the base of tombs. Most sessile thralls are connected to the grid but remote tombs rely on local energy production and molasses shipments.
Several factors influence a thrall’s cognitive capacity, most outside of one’s control. Often, people take their own lives before old age could erode their cognition and condemn them to a lowly service in death. Although brain-thralls have come a long way since their inception, compared to a living adult, even the brightest one is painfully dense. What makes them invaluable is following commands with utmost care and obedience.
Generally, the dead are unseen and unobtrusive, but twice a year, huge holiday processions visit server-tombs and factories, while libations are poured for the hecatombs of thralls that keep the city running. Depending on their roles, thralls can serve up to a hundred years; even more in a dormant state. Their capabilities gradually decay, while they receive lower and lower ratings on their yearly assessments. Once a thrall is unworkable, it can finally die a real death. Decommissioned brains are stripped of their wiring and then ceremoniously incinerated.
Descent into the abyss
The Nether is the afterlife of Neuropolis. It is the network that keeps individual thralls, filed away in remote server-tombs, easily accessible. A decentralized mass of sessile thralls makes up the core, to which others only periodically connect. The living interact with the Nether in two ways:
- Guided access only hints at the true depths of the Nether. There are dedicated public access points, but any thrall can serve as a psychopomp. This guide interprets the network and displays the contents on whatever device is available. The most common interface is a touch console or a peripheral nervous connection, although smarter guides can understand simple voice commands.
- Direct access offers real immersion into the ghastly fabric of the afterlife. A cerebral interface affords you the same brain-to-brain connection that thralls experience when they log onto the Nether. To establish direct access, you have to jam the gilded connector of an access terminal into your cranial socket. This is the way of the psychonaut.
When you cross the threshold, incredible dizziness overtakes you as your body enters thanatosis. When you come to on the other side, you find the last image of the waking world still burned into your visual cortex. You are immediately confronted by the pareidolic dreams of the deceased: sceneries hauntingly familiar yet terrifyingly alien, both comforting and uncanny. One needs strong resolve to navigate this realm and inhuman empathy to affect it. Tapping into this world lets the skilled psychonaut discover trends and even influence them. The more you immerse yourself in the Nether, however, the less familiar you grow with reality. Your brain will increasingly crave the thoughts of others, but it will find only the cold isolation of your skull.
While navigating the streams of crystallized thought, one can stumble upon a variety of virtual spaces. The base infrastructure of the Nether requires high-level access to directly observe, but its cognitive influence is always there in the background like a distant pulse. The staggering output of overworked decision networks makes your own thoughts appear almost paralyzed. The antechambers of data archives react like whiplash to the right query only to fall dormant right after. The perimeters of the Vigil’s virtual assets are actively hostile spaces, offering little else beyond violent migraines.
Unlike the breadth of the open Nether, private networks are isolated and quiet. These personal and familial enclosures are the living’s preferred virtual destinations where they play games, exchange surface thoughts or meditate in solitude. The environments materialize as clever simulacra: melting deserts, fractal gardens, ego death dioramas and highways of sensory overload. Some err on the side of plausibility, while others are entirely unreal.
Pathological prospects
Beneath the skin
Nergal II is a young ecosystem, only centuries-old; nothing compared to the billion-year biosphere of distant Chthon. Here, life had no time to settle every last recess and establish an enduring presence. The strain on the natural world is noticeable. Man-made air pollution outclasses the native volcanoes of the planet. Underwater mining strips the ocean floor of its precious biota. Nuclear waste finds a coffin in deep-sea trenches. There is a growing record of species previously well-established, now extinct.
The colony’s resources are insufficient for an opulent lifestyle for all. Most citizens live in minuscule dwellings and own just a few things. Although a narrow selection of mass-produced goods is readily available, there are year-long waiting lists for certain organs and appliances. Newly manufactured products are out of reach for many, and bespoke items are only an option for those at the very top. A few specimens of real wood, fashioned into lacquered dressers and lecherous statuettes, are proudly exhibited in affluent homes.
People yearn for purpose. Some find it in a religious adherence to family rituals. Others withdraw from society to pursue eccentric art projects or experiment with necromancy and other esoteric practices. For many, what is absent above is intensely present below, in the Nether. Millions cross the threshold every day in search of catharsis and fulfillment. Although the hardware filters out most of the harmful effects, for the novice psychonaut, the Nether is an insanely deep hole to fall into untethered. A few thousand cases of Nether-induced psychosis are reported each year.
The family is the shaky foundation of Neuropolitan society. Indeed, in most areas of life, an influential patron is the only way to get ahead, and it is impossible to grace the most elite circles without a devoted following. Ideally, these relationships are beneficial. In reality, they routinely turn predatory or parasitic, and every family is bursting at the seams with dozens of flimsily covered-up scandals.
The cutthroat meritocracy gnaws at the well-being of every living citizen. Most manage with the occasional sabbatical and sanatorium visit, but eventually, millions surrender and become like shadows: not quite living, but not as invisible as the dead. Whether by necessity or by choice, some people do not meet their developmental targets and, legally speaking, remain children. Others escape to distant islands and turn to smuggling and piracy.
Separatists wish to break up the monolithic colony-state, while others seek to liberate thralls or migrate to the stars. The ossified workings of the colony are slow to change, however. The system seldom acknowledges protest, and obvious rebellion is quickly quenched by the Vigil. Executions are not in vogue, but the Senate is not afraid to exile incompatible elements to asylums and prison ships to ensure the correct functioning of their Neuropolis. Although judicial courts are swelling with cases, powerful parties settle their disputes without the involvement of the law.
In many ways, the civil war still haunts the collective psyche of Neuropolis. Wartime artifacts appear in private collections and museums alike. Dusty cabinets and ancient tales are full of shrapnel guns, bolt rifles, cyclone missiles and other weapons of the era. There are tribes openly nostalgic for the Expectant regime of old while other voices call for a new Forlorn rebellion to revitalize a colony that has grown decadent. Analysts caution against a repeat of history.
Inconclusive diagnoses
The direction of the colony’s eugenics project makes certain people anxious. They claim that the genetic stock is degrading and that modern culture is eroding the youth’s character. Influential families are said to produce mutant batches for private use. There are rumors of ritual suicides and unlawful burials. Some believe that they were born naturally, and illegally.
It is easy to imagine countless new technologies germinating out of sight. Despite sanctions, secret laboratories are no doubt working on artificial minds, trying to recapture a sliver of the Sisyphean Burden’s potency. A few fear that today’s invasive and shallow brain-reading technology might soon be replaced by new methods that can accurately reconstruct thoughts through the skull. Others are convinced that a formidable consciousness has taken root in the immense neural mass of the Nether.
The popular conscious is filled with danger. Mysterious disappearances coincide with brain-hungry government projects. Children lose sleep over tales of thralls returning to torment those who have hurt them in life. Secret societies conspire, cracking skulls, eating brains and denying their victims an afterlife. Decrepit drones and immortal chimeras wake from their post-war slumber and hunt for prey on certain nights. Of course, official statements reject many such claims.
The source of the most speculation, however, is the legend of the Sisyphean Burden. Was the seeding ark running from some world-ending threat? Many believe that the Expectant still linger in remote parts of the Nergal System, waiting for the Burden’s return. If the spacecraft came back, would it deliver the worthy to paradise as the Expectant hoped, or would it unleash cataclysm as punishment for some ancient slight? Perhaps it would zoom past the colony, intentionally oblivious to its enduring spawn.