Before the cities left, and plunged our world into a global dark age, there were stories that told that history.
Collected here are the works of four authors who have been telling scraps and pieces of what happened.
All through the eyes of the people (and animals) who lived it. Some are fantastic, others could be tall tales, perhaps some are downright lies. But that is all why they had to be published as fiction.
Because few people would believe it, even as a TV documentary.
All highly speculative. And that's why it's called Speculative Fiction. But its a very human telling. You may even find yourself in here...
This anthology containing:
The Lazurai Returns by C. C. Brower & J. R. Kruze
When the Cities Left, I Danced by C. C. Brower
The Lazurai by J. R. Kruze
A Sweet Fortune by R. L. Saunders
Our Second Civil War by R. L. Saunders & C. C. Brower
Becoming Michelle by R. L. Saunders & C. C. Brower
Mind Timing by R. L. Saunders & C. C. Brower
When The Wild Calls by C. C. Brower
The War Bringeth by C. C. Brower
...and many more.
Excerpt:
Each with a thundering roar, the cities took flight.
Cities — whole cities — roared into the atmosphere, their protective globes turned red and then yellow with the reflections of the exhaust.
Their fusion reactors scarred the skies with fume trails. Any place on earth you could see them rise. All the 50 United States and all the major countries who could afford the technology had cities flying that day.
They turned their major cities into a one-species "Noah's Ark" to save humanity from itself. Take the best and brightest, and all who could fit, up past the atmosphere and beyond it. Seek a "new life in the stars."
This statement came from the last international broadcast. And it played out at its end with a great symphony chord.
Unstated was the little-hidden fact that the richest corporate heads and their families and investors all traveled on-board as well, first class.
The Arks took temporary station along the "ring of pearls" - those satellites in orbit protected by the same shield as the cities. For a while, their glow added to those pearls. But one by one, those pearls extinguished. Some, with powerful enough Earth telescopes, could see them absorbed into the cities.
Around two weeks later, the cities one by one moved out as a string of their own towards the moon.
Later, a hail of meteors followed in their wake. We didn't know what those were at first. The last radio transmissions we could receive said they were falling into desolate areas. We couldn't check this as the cell phones and land lines had all quit working at that point. The towers still worked locally as long as they were solar powered. But just as quickly as the Internet had died, all intercontinental communications ceased.
Because that "ring of pearls" they'd taken with them were all the major satellites that still worked. While they were also in orbit, they were scooping up all the other "non-vital" satellites and orbiting debris as some grand ecological gesture. These either burned up when they ran into the Arks greater power fields or were just absorbed into them...
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