In a dark and unlucky city with black onyx, slightly dilapidated and looming from the unscalable heights, an intimi- dating granite stone face overlooked the town: tin shanties of the marketplace spanning the city limits, a Gotham-like atmosphere of black, grey and tin all sub- sumed under a sky of thick, rust-colored clouds constantly flickering with purple thunder and acid rain threats. This was mostly a byproduct of the Eighth World War and the massive suspended hive, a sky colony that only the insiders had seen, and those below only dreaded. Without one looking up too much the giant iron hive with opaque windows created the same awe that the star known as the Sun did before the greed inspired man made war of the apocalypse. The population be- low were all silent vassals and peasants of the castle in the sky. They managed their piteous affairs of commerce and survival going about in squalid rags
mostly, constantly concealing their pennies from the lawless rogues, bandits and gangs that they were the unwilling fodder of.
Lanterns of kerosene and lamp posts with shoddy wiring were the only sources of light in this city barricaded in by jagged mountains and low topography. Animal life of the lower orders was largely wiped out. Plant life was merely a myth in the minds of the citizen majority of Neohades. Scattered about were barren plots of rocklike soil that could just as well be asphalt. The “Company”, an openly secret and powerful organization set up oxygen processing machines, interspersing them throughout the city of
Neohades in order to keep the squalid, struggling people below the dome marginally alive and struggling, but never living. One could hardly call the existence of people in these conditions “life” in the way earlier generations could. In order to eat, many people competed in the market for vegetables and small rodents which were largely for the rich. Freeze dried astronaut supply rations were produced by the hydroponic irrigation systems of the Hive. Although the food distributed as rations in the dark city of Neohades was tasteless, it was high in demand and voraciously coveted. Meanwhile, it was rumored that the inhabitants of the Hive gorged themselves on cloned sheep, bi- son, fowl, bulbed and green vegetables, the sort of things that were enjoyed rather commonly on the “Old Earth.”. The ravenous hordes of the streets below traded betrayals, alliances, body parts, organs and human chattel
amongst other things to keep this cannibalistic cycle going on from day to day.
(to be continued)
