Welcome
This account of the excavation of the city of Heliopoli has ceased operations, but there is plenty to explore. Sit in a ribbon chair, drink some Tang and take the tour.
You can start at the beginning with The Poster or here at the end. It makes no matter where you begin. Heliopoli is a circular city.
In the movie The Empire Strikes Back, the young Jedi Luke Skywalker is interrupted in his practice of the Force with a vision of his friends in trouble. Master Yoda looks into the future to see what the friends’ fates might be. “Difficult to say,” he finally mutters. “Always in motion is the future.”
For years and years — up until only a few years ago, actually — I always thought this line was “Always emotion is the future.”
I much prefer this reading of the line. “Always emotion is the future” has a kind of frission for me; as cryptic as it sounds, it makes more sense. [And apparently "frission" isn't a word, so I'll use it here and define it later -- something along the lines of frisson from fiction, with an infusion of truth.]
The future has always been emotional for me, in regard to reading and writing science fiction. Writing this account of the excavation of Heliopoli has been emotional, and oddly enough has been increasingly so. This is a roundabout way, however, of saying I think it has run its course, one that has lasted two years. I thought at the beginning that I would do it for only two years anyway, and doubted I would last that long. So, it’s time for the excavators to pack up. There is one more post that can wrap things up, but it needs to wait; and I’ll either post it in the new place or let the city have one last secret.
I’ll continue to post on my personal Web site, which has had blogging capability for several months now, and I recently found myself sweeping out and refurbishing the place to make room for something new. My attention on the Internet seems to have split in all directions and it makes me want to pull back (and there’s not much sense in having more than one blog anyway). I’ll keep this site up and use it to comment elsewhere and, who knows, maybe the excavators will return to dig some more one day.
I doubt I’ll be able to let the city go very easily, but it’s hard to predict such things.
After all, always emotion is the future.
The next time a piece of software threatens me with viruses unless I update it constantly, the toaster gets it.
Evil: When I have the map, I will be free, and the world will be different, because I have understanding.
Robert: Uh, understanding of what, Master?
Evil: Digital watches. And soon I shall have understanding of video cassette recorders and car telephones. And when I have understanding of them, I shall have understanding of computers. And when I have understanding of computers, I shall be the Supreme Being!
– Time Bandits (1981)
“We’ve stumbled a lot. And when you stumble a lot you start looking at your feet. No, we have to make people lift their eyes back to the horizon and see the line of ancestors behind us saying, ‘Make my life have meaning,’ and to our inheritors before us saying, ‘Create the world we will live in.’
“We’re not just holding jobs and having dinner. We are in the process of building the future.”
– Captain John Sheridan, “Babylon 5″
“We will meet in Red 3 at the Hour of Scampering.”
– Ambassador Kosh, “Babylon 5″
Measure my life in coffee spoons? Nah. Album covers.
Happy 40th anniversary, Tranquility Base.
.
Did I mention that Heliopoli was a circular city?
Did I mention that it is ringed and trisected by the monorail?
Did I mention that the pedways create a symbol that can only be seen from above?
Yes — yes, I did.
Good.
Just wanted to make sure.
“These founders were not perfect people; they were not gods. They were human beings. But we mustn’t just see them as human beings because they were imperfect; they were also human beings because they could achieve great things. They could have dreams of what they hoped to achieve.”
– David McCullough, in a documentary included in the DVD release of HBO’s John Adams
Photo © ACF
It is rumored that the excavation of the city of Heliopoli will cease operations on Oct. 4, 2009, exactly two years after its start. Though I can’t confirm this, it is true that nearly all the major structures have been unearthed and described, excepting the Lightworks, the Slideway Shopping Mall and the Museum of Futoria. There are plenty of details to explore, however, so it is hard to say whether this record will merely change slightly at that time, or become its own archeological artifact (and we have wandered from our course occasionally anyway). Certainly there is a great amount of cataloging to be done given the amount of mood rings, Uncandles, Fidgets, fiber-optic lamps, and bean-bag chairs that have been found, not to mention the necessity to pay tribute to the color lime green.
At any rate, more major structures might be uncovered as the excavators redouble their efforts, or merely stumble upon them. Take the Balloon Ferry, for instance.
As mentioned before, Heliopoli is a circular city that never lacked in transportation. It is ringed and trisected by the monorail and honeycombed underground by the Metro. It sports slideways and pedways, and its citizens make use of the ubiquitous uniped single-wheel transport. So why would the city need a Balloon Ferry?
At opposite ends of the city lie platforms that are now known to be stations for hot-air balloons. These were at first thought to be unfinished monorail stations until excavator Theronomous Moon wandered past the city into the desert and found sprays of color just under the sandy surface. These proved to be buried portions of hot-air balloon fabric. The rest fell into place.
As a transportation system, hot-air balloons would be quite efficient; as an aesthetic experience, unparalleled. One floats above the city; there is no wind, since one is traveling with it. This aerial view can make one appreciate the city’s design like never before. The city’s own citizens can then apprehend its circularity, its aesthetic aplomb, its radial symmetry, its shining wonder; and there is evidence that the pedways surrounding the Central Plaza create a certain pattern, a symbol, that can only be ascertained from above. Besides, to travel from one end of the city to the other could not be achieved faster than by hot-air balloon.
But no. The theory doesn’t work.
The gondolas that have been found attached to the balloons can hold at most two people. This is hardly an efficient transportation system, or cost-effective for any other purpose — if the purpose was to carry people.
So now we know, and know that there can be other reasons for the city’s need for a Balloon Ferry than just what lies at the surface:
The balloons of Heliopoli were not for looking down from but for looking up at.
There would be at least two or three balloons aloft at any given time. Carrying only one or two attendants, they decorated the air with a looking up, a striving to.
At any hour of the day, a good portion of the citizens of Heliopoli were shading their eyes and gazing into a rainbow sky.
