Why it never ends

Chapter 20 Mother City
Hesta suddenly recalled the anthropology she had read in Abbot Alma's lounge, and Mina De Lied and the femur fossil she mentioned, and she suddenly realized that as early as in the monastery, she had She touched the door leading to the era before the blackout, but she missed the key word at that time.

"Legacy of the Golden Age, do you mean books?" Hesta asked.

"It's far more than that," Liz sat down on a nearby table, "Our current world is divided into sixteen regions, so do you know why there are sixteen?"

Hesta shook her head, and Liz started talking.

"At the end of the golden age, the war pushed the whole world to the end, the resources were scarce, and the population dropped sharply. After the blackout era, in less than a hundred years, all public facilities were destroyed and buildings were burned. Get bombed and you never see schools, hospitals, churches...

"Without antibiotics and vaccines, a sudden epidemic can take away almost all newborns in a group, the mortality rate of pregnant women is as high as 15%, and the survival rate of children is less than 40%.

"After losing the education system, the literacy rate dropped rapidly between generations, and the books in the library gradually became meaningless to most people. They were burned one by one to keep warm and survive the winter. But As soon as summer comes, people have nothing to do about the high temperature. As long as the high temperature of 40 degrees lasts for two weeks, it will be a disaster for the elderly over 70 years old in the community...

"Everyone believes that the world is coming to an end. The dying old man misses everything in the civilized world and tries to call for the restoration of order, but the young people who grew up in the ruins don't care about these at all. They have their own jungle logic and are obsessed with Redistributed to the territory... Human technology fell back to the level of farming in less than 200 years—until the world's first mother city appeared."

"...Mother City?"

"Yes," Liz said, as if referring to her homeland, her voice was full of warmth, "it is a dreamlike city with an area of ​​34.12 square kilometers, like a seed drilled out of the ground, the huge city is empty Alone, but orderly.

"It is a relic of the old civilization. Nuclear energy and solar energy maintain its operation. About [-] robots are in charge of the maintenance of the entire city. From the well-preserved buildings in the mother city, people finally realize the golden age The legend of this book is not a dream - it really existed, and it suddenly fell among us like a miracle.

"After that, sixteen mother cities appeared one after another around the world within one year, relying on the libraries, research institutes and automated factories in the cities. Although many technologies in the mother cities are still black boxes for us now, we He only knows how to operate it, but he doesn't know the principle, let alone re-engraving... But after all, human beings have regained the flame of civilization.

"Relying on these sixteen mother cities, we have come to today. From the first district to the No.14 district, they are named according to the order in which the mother cities emerged. The fifteenth district and the sixteenth district are special. So far, we haven’t found a way to enter these two mother cities without damage, so we put it on hold for now.”

Liz looked at Hesta, "The era of blackout began in 3812 with the 'Starshot Night' event, and ended in the spring of 4001 when the first mother city arrived. This is a short but long darkest moment in human history— ——Right now, every region is busy deciphering the technology of their mother city, but their focus is always on energy and military industry, and literature is just a trivial embellishment..."

Liz's introduction ended with a long sigh full of regret, and she took Hesta to a world map.

The first thing Hesta saw was the third district, after all, it had a raised effect on the map. She reached out and gently touched the raised mountain representing the mountain, and then her eyes slowly shifted to the side.

"Where is the blue area? Why is it so big?"

Liz let out a burst of laughter, "It's the sea, Jane."

She looked at the map, "Our place is not far from the seaside, only an hour's drive away—it's just that the procedure for applying for a travel permit is too complicated. If there is an opportunity to be sent abroad in the future, I can take you to see it."

Afterwards, Liz pointed out the different areas on the map one by one, and Hesta listened without saying a word, as if she just knew this world for the first time today.

She saw that the third area covers a vast area, a total of 1147 million square kilometers, which is the second largest area on earth, but the habitable area here is only a mere 64 square kilometers-the rest is waiting to be discovered. The "wasteland" of development.

According to Liz, the distribution of people in the third district is very extreme. Tan Yi is the fourth largest city in the third district, but about 1/3 of the population of the district lives.

And the fourteenth district—in Hesta's imagination, there should be ten large districts between the fourteenth district and the third district, but no—the fourteenth district is directly adjacent to the third district.

It's just that the 2473th District is also very large. If you want to calculate the absolute distance between here and the 186th District, it is still very far away.Its total area has reached a staggering [-] million square kilometers, covering almost all the land from south to north on the continental plate where it is located. Its habitable area is [-] million square kilometers, which is almost three times that of the third zone. .

She saw the vast snowfield in the north of District [-]. On that piece of permafrost that hadn't melted for years, there were hardly any symbols representing towns or roads.

The world map was just quietly hanging on the wall, but Hesta standing in front of the map seemed to be washed heavily by a torrent.

At first, she tried to find Short Ming Lane or St. Anne's Abbey on the map, and Liz told her that these places were too small to be found on the world map.

So she turned to look for the Cevennes, but saw a long Cevennes, which slowly rose from the sea in the northern part of the third district, and slowly extended inland, with a staggering length.

Liz laughed again, saying that the Cevennes just happened to have the same name as the Cevennes, and that the area occupied by the Cevennes outside Tanyi City was still too small to be marked on this map.If she insisted on looking at Mount Severn on the map, she could look for it on the electronic map later.

Hesta froze.Earlier when Liz talked about the function of literature, she was ignorant, and when she talked about the exploration of the universe in the golden age, she also had a flat reaction, but at this moment, when she silently faced the land and sea on the map, she clearly felt that she was very interested in this A certain awareness of the world is shattered.

She thought of where she used to live, of the high ridges and endless mountains outside the monastery.

Severn Hill, are you still young?
So how big is this world...?

Hesta looked up.

Staring at the map of the world, she felt her own insignificance for the first time.

　Thanks to Linglan yeh, Shihuai, book friend 20170520, Jinx ii and Heyao for their rewards and monthly tickets (ω)

　　
　
(End of this chapter)