The day started with me digging up cactus. Grandpa Dale had a weird beef with cactuses, bad enough to pay me 10 cents for every pound I turned in. Looking back at it, I think they offended him because they could exist without his consent: They didn't need his water, they didn't need his fertilizer, and they certainly didn't need his permission.
And that, he simply could not abide.
Grandpa Dale had been doing something weird that whole morning. I knew because I'd been able to watch him since sunrise. Every time I took a break from digging cactus to look back at the house, I saw him doing something with the gopher holes.
That made me nervous. Things never went well when he started messing with the gophers. Earlier that month he'd tried gassing them out, and all he got from that effort was nasty looking blisters up both arms. He almost never complained about anything, but he griped all day about how bad those blisters hurt. When his wife suggested that he go to the hospital he said No, what am I gonna tell them? That my trench got overrun? They wouldn't buy that. They'd think I was cooking meth.
Which was funny to hear, but also, true, and also, enough for me to know better than to get involved in future gopher battles.
Which is to admit that I did get involved. But I should've known better. A few hours in, he invited me over, gave me a cold soda, and showed me what he had set up: Two camping chairs, a wicked sharp shovel, a car battery, and a long length of copper wire leading to a pit he'd dug in the middle of the yard. Told me that if I stayed a bit and took a break, cooled down there with a soda in the shade, I'd see something amazing. I asked him if there was even a chance I could get hurt by this "something amazing", and he said "no," which I knew was a bald faced lie. But I believed him because I wanted to believe him. Because I wanted to know what he'd done, and I wanted to sit there in the shade with my grandpa. I also figured, hey, maybe getting gassed taught him a lesson.
(Never, ever assume that the kind of person willing to break out chemical weapons against gophers is capable of being taught a lesson.)
So I sat down in my chair and he beamed at that. He loved having an audience. Then I watched him lean forward and tap the ends of the wire against the battery terminals.
And that's where everything went wrong.
The first thing that hit me was the yard itself. Little bits of sand and grit flying fast enough to hit my skin and bite. It took a year and change for all the little bits to work their way out. But I didn't even feel it at the time, because of what happened after.
I genuinely think he'd imagined the gophers getting launched out of the holes, disoriented but alive. I think that shovel was there to finish them off afterwards. Which also would've been traumatizing, but probably less so than watching each of those cute little gopher holes projectile vomit bloody piles of tattered critter all over the lawn.
Which, spoiler alert, is exactly what happened. The sky fell down, and the ground flew up, and the gophers found themselves with nowhere to go. So they did the next best thing and went a little bit everywhere.
I don't think it was actually silent afterwards, but I couldn't hear shit. There was just this long, ringing period of us looking at each other, then the meat piles, then the lawn crater, then the big buckled section of yard that looked oddly like Rockies just behind us, then back to each other.
I think I did that two or three times before I felt my shoulders start to shake a little. I was crying. Felt weird to cry and not be able to hear it. Like a tic almost, or the way your body seizes up right before you puke.
And then I looked at his face, and I saw him mouth a single soundless word:
Babylon was the capital of the biggest, richest empire in all of Mobius, thousands of years ago. The city was widely known for its riches, its architecture, its advanced technology. Naturally many people wanted a part of that life. So they began flocking towards the ever growing city.
As it goes when many people come to the same city with high hopes and dreams, some ended up being disappointed. Some arrived too late. Some ended up on the streets. The City of Babylon was split into districts of different political importance and standing.
Imagine you’re an immigrant. You enter the city over a bridge towards a blue gate, bigger and more pompous than anything you’ve ever seen. But behind the gate you don’t find a comfy home and a pile of golden coins. You find a road with many doors that are locked to you. The first gate is the only one you may pass. It leads to the commoners district. A place where people work hard for their daily bread, but most are happy nontheless. Houses are so close to each other that some alleyways are hardly even wide enough to accommodate more than one person walking through them. All you see are windows, hardly ever doors. The entrances of the buildings face away from the busy street to give the residents privacy. Houses have small courtyards that connect 2 - 4 houses with each other. Neighbours cook and chat together in the courtyard. They play board games. Children play. And when night falls everyone returns into their bedrooms. Some have even taken to living on their roofs in summer.
It’s a simple life but not a bad one.
Hidden in the shadows of the crowded commoners district however are the slums. I don’t need to explain to you what the slums are. The poor. The sick. Thieves. Murderers. The abandoned. A place almost devoid of hope.
The only thing people from these two districts have in common is their hope to one day cross the river that splits the great city in two halves.
Because on the other side lies their promised land.
The University district. - Reserved for those who have the funds and status to study languages, architecture or the arts.
The Royal district. - Reserved for the Royal Family and their staff.
The Temple district. - Reserved for the priestesses and their staff. Lead by the most beloved mortal figure in all of Babylon. The high Priestess Anatu. Which brings me to point two of this lore post:
Now it was no mistake of mine, or an attempt for a cool segway into the religion topic that I placed “Royal district” beneath “Temple district”. In fact these were sorted by their political importance.
That’s right. Babylon my be ruled by a King and his Queen. But even the King is bound to listen to the words of the High Priestess as she is the voice of the gods and thus the most powerful mortal woman in the Empire of Babylon:
Meet the high priestess Anatu:
Above her are only the Anunnaki themselves. The Gods that travelled from the stars and founded the city of Babylon.
As the high priestess she first and foremostly serves the highest of their gods who embodies the sun. You will see the flower-like symbol on her palms and her brooch. That is the god’s symbol. It represents the sun. It’s one of the symbols you will encounter quite frequently in the city. But he is not the only god.
There are three others.
Ellil who is the counsellor of the sun.
Ninurta who is the sun’s chamberlain.
and Ennugi who controls the canal.
The Sun god and his chamberlain reside in the palace on the hanging gardens, the floating island that powers the city.
