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TechNews | Tuesday, NovemberZan, 2016

  

Frost in their Mortar. A short story

Continuedfrom Page 7

In the project’s early years, geological
blast teams and construction crews largely
functioned in a traditional fashion, with a
hierarchy formatted similarly to the laborer
and supervisor roles used in the construction
of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National
System of Interstate and Defense Highways
close to a century before. Now, though, the
arrangement was quite different. Rather than
employing human craftsmen to build each of
the site’s millions of homes, a fleet of hulking,
complex machines roamed the land day and
night, spitting out buildings behind them at a
rate of about three dwellings per hour. These
machines were attended to by technicians
who could diagnose any issues and make
repairs, but all construction work was done
by the contraptions themselves. If anything
occurred that could not be remedied by a
process contained within a technician’s manual
of potential maladies, an engineer was called
in to assess the situation. So far, this hadn’t
happened. The teams who designed these
machines were among the best in the world, so
the on—site engineers largely spent their time
granting unofficial interviews to members of
the press from the confines of their new homes
in the most central four communities of the
complex.

It was there that Henning found
himself on a temperate Friday evening, across a
coffee table from a polite, middle—aged woman
of Somali origin and her husband, a German
twelve years her junior who she had met while
teaching at Hochschule Darmstadt. Henning
knew neither of their names, since despite
the casual nature with which the engineers
were generally treated by managerial staff for
the project, there could be repercussions for
letting slip certain details to press members. He
could probably identify them with some basic
research based on the stories they had told him
about themselves, but it wasn’t in anybody’s
interests for him to have that knowledge. The
two had been his editors” main contact point
within the vast site since moving in when
home manufacturing began three months ago,
and Henning had spoken with them in virtual

conference rooms many times prior to his
physical trip.

They had already been through
the motions of gathering information for his
assigned report topic earlier that day. Henning
had sat down that afternoon with the Somali
woman and a few of her neighbors to discuss
the automation which underpinned the
construction and maintenance of all the homes
in this vast system, documenting various ways
in which everything from food growth to
structure repairs were managed by automated
systems complex enough that they had never
previously been applied outside a military
context. The identical, idyllic communities in
the grid were meant to house millions of people
living in what they believed to be the beginning
of a post—work world, a grand experiment with
roots in Iacque Fresco’s Venus Project and
Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist Movement. They would
grow, learn, and prosper in their communities,
but they would never have to toil. In fact, many
of the initial non—employee residents of the
compound were previously employed in fields
that the compounds technology would render
useless, hoping to find peace by living in a
community based upon their own professional
obsolescence.

Despite the physically mirrored
nature of every community within the
complex, the blocks were not designed to be
truly homogeneous. Nobody had ever been
able to track down whether the directives for
the project came from a single source, since the
number of intertwined companies working on
it was in the thousands, but it was clear from
the beginning that a unique pricing structure
would be employed for each residential plot.
Communities near the outer edges of the
cleared land would be expensive to live in,
and were being built last in order to capture
a particular type of customer. The groups
occupying homes in these spaces would likely
be those most skeptical of the project as a
whole, approaching a drastic shift in their lives
with guarded optimism while also forming
contingency plans. That said, they were likely
the most well—heeled, hailing from professional
backgrounds and interested in the complex
from a largely academic perspective. Having

them near the outside of the compound allowed
them to come and go easily if they chose to,
while the less expensive inner units weren’t
expected to see much external travel. At the
very center of the compound, the four reserved
engineering and technician communities were
the only parts of the compound where “work”
still had a meaning in the established sense.
Sitting in the kitchen of his hosts,
Henning bore witness to an engaged debate
the couple was having over some aspect
of European history. He had found that
the engineer’s husband, the German, was
constantly at risk of veering off into pseudo—
philosophical topics related to any and all
aspects of technical discussion about the details
of the complex. Henning had gathered earlier
in the day that the German had not finished
his Civil Engineering degree at Hochschule
Darmstadt, choosing instead to complete his
education at HafenCity Universitat Hamburg,
in the field of Metropolitan Culture. This
explained in part why he had no professional
role in the project he now lived in, but felt free
to interpret its every facet in myriad convoluted
ways. Right now, it involved the Dark Ages:
..most Europeans in the 8th and
9th Century were keenly aware of the existence
of the Roman Empire before them. They lived
among the ruins of a civilization that far
eclipsed their own capabilities to build or to
govern on such a large scale. Roman society
had rather quietly disintegrated in previous
centuries, and many modern civilizations
across Europe were initially formed as wood—
and—straw encampments built into the shells
of stone structures that their inhabitants
could not fathom creating themselves.
Granted, the Romans documented their
construction methods and political system for
future societies to build upon, but no single
group would have the concentration of both
manpower and willpower to attempt what the
Romans achieved until many centuries later. In
fact, many early English tribes, living on former
Roman land, believed that their inability to
recreate the Roman environment meant that
they were living in the end times, and that they
were among the last human groups to exist
before Earth itself would perish...

Henning tuned out the talk; he
had heard many such asides in the German’s
presence that day, weaving their way through
metaphors, stories, and omens. The man had
made it clear that he had reservations about
the entire concept of the development, but
those reservations were grounded in a sense of
futility: that all this work was bound to wash
away with the ages, rendering it ultimately
useless for mankind. Henning knew there was
practical merit to that view, but it was tiresome
to consider such a cynical perspective. If
something of this magnitude was futile, then
what did that say about the merits of any
smaller—scale human endeavor, least of which
being the German’s own observations?

Tomorrow Henning would return
to Seattle with a wealth of information in
hand, thoroughly documenting many of the
automated processes that made this strange
place tick. He had gotten word today that
construction was starting on another such site
in Vermont, and a third was eventually slated
for eastern Tennessee. If this was all bound
to be emptied out and left to rot one day, the
communal towers of concrete at the center
of each little community would likely be the
subject of awe for whatever post—technological
natives inhabited the place next. It could take
those men and women many generations,
though, to plot a course around each build
site and figure out that the land was levelled
in a perfect square; interpreting the machines
which made the complex tick would be even
harder, since each device might as well be an
Antikythera mechanism for somebody without
an implicit understanding of its workings.
Henning’s editors were generally averse to
sentimentality, so it didn’t matter in the end.
His role was to inform the people of the
present, and he would relish that opportunity
while it still existed.

Holiday season starts with a bang in Millennium Park

Steven Milan Moreno
TECH N EWS WRITER

The start of the holiday season
in Chicagoland was marked by the 103rd
Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in
Millennium Park on the corner of Michigan
Avenue and Washington Street on Friday,
November 18. While people waited for the
event to start later in the evening, several other
events took place around the famed “Cloud
Gate” (commonly referred to as "The Bean")
inside the park to mark the special occasion.
These included the opening of the seasonal
skating ring directly below the famed sculpture
and the opening of a Virtual Reality (VR)
Experience Pavilion by Facebook across from
"The Bean.” Many of the people in attendance
for the ceremony started to line up to take their
turn at both attractions while they waited for

 

the main event to begin.

The Facebook VR Experience was
only recently set up in Millennium Park, and
is a free experience open to anyone ages 13
and up. While many were excited and amazed
by their first glimpse at virtual reality, others
were more skeptical of the device, opting
to voice their concerns and problems with
the device through the optional survey that
followed their demonstration. Despite some
negative remarks, many were still amazed by
the technology they had just experienced and
were soon finding themselves asking questions
about purchasing and using the device at
their own homes. The pavilion is scheduled
to remain in the park for the most of the
remainder of November (excluding holidays).

Across from the Facebook pavilion
was the skating rink, which was a less popular
attraction for the day through no fault of its

1'1_'Jh‘
“I!

own. Despite the opening date of the rink being
made at a time when cold weather should have
appeared in Chicago, the unusually warm
November weather meant the ice—covered rink
became more of a watery slurry over time as
patrons began to skate across. Despite this
setback, many skaters were willing to put up
with the watery conditions due to the unique
situation they found themselves in: being able
to skate in warm weather. With no need for
large, warm clothing, skaters found themselves
in lighter attire which provided them greater
maneuverability. This made for fantastic
skating moves and overall mobility in the rink,
making the rink popular with experienced
skaters. Despite the weather setback on Friday,
weather forecasts for the city show colder
weather ahead, meaning no such problem will
occur again anytime soon.

The ceremony itself included several

performances, including music from carolers
and the band STOMP, a scene by the cast and
crew of Rudolf the Red—Nosed Reindeer the
Musical, and a special visit by Santa Claus
towards the end. The lighting of the tree soon
followed and was itself followed by a surprise
fireworks finale emerging from the rooftop
of a nearby building. The fireworks were
incredibly close, proving a spectacular scene
that engulfed the entire sky above the park.
When the lighting ceremony was complete,
many began to gather around the tree to get up
close and personal to the beautiful sight that
glimmered and shined across the entirety of
the park. It was truly a spectacular sight, and
will continue to be for the remainder of the
holiday season here in the Windy City.

 

Photos by Steven Milan Moreno