Kaeres
Blue and white lights dance across your face as you take a seat on the train. It starts off again, shunting and shaking its way into movement to settle into a low hum. It drowns out peoples voices to whispers. The train emerges from the tunnel. You and all the train-goers blink at the sudden sunlight, but your vision clears soon enough. Kaeres is before you, at first a sea of grey buildings. But there was life in every corner. Buildings locked into one another in sharp angles or entwined like vines. People disappeared through cracks and around corners. You emerge onto the platform and breathe cool, artificial air that flooded all the domes. Outside the domes the storm raged.
Kaeres’ foundation was the endeavor of multiple companies to promote a new line of cities that excelled in inhospitable conditions. Kaeres, being the first attempt, was built on rocky terrain that made it difficult for any sort of movement. The cities were designed to be self-sustainable through various power sources such as water, wind, and solar, and a new element that would account for 65% if the power output. Kaeres’ domes, soon to be their signature feature, housed all sorts of areas, from agricultural, to economic, to residential. It was a feat of engineering, and for fifty years the city flourished.
However, reports slowly emerged that the new element Kaeres relied upon was unstable. After much reassurance by the scientific body behind the creation and management of the element (backed in turn by the Syed company), these reports were largely ignored. This proved disastrous. The dome that was to cover the power generators had not yet been completed, and during a storm it was struck by lightning. Eyewitnesses that survived said it looked like a massive explosion. All staff in the facility were killed. The residual radiation killed anyone else near the explosion anywhere from a few hours to several years. At this point, the phenomenon known as the Kaeres storm began. The storm, as best anyone can understand it, is a radioactive nightmare. It hasn’t faltered or broken in over 100 years. It is toxic to all forms of life and covers a large area that included Kaeres and its surrounding small supporting settlements, which have since been abandoned.
But Kaeres had been built by an old breed. Tradesmen, farmers, scientists, them and their descendants had built Kaeres with their own blood, sweat, and tears. They would not abandon their home. The local government at the time of the disaster became useless. In a rare moment of bureaucratic clarity, they quietly held an election to transfer power to those who could rebuild Kaeres. A lot of the old city was stripped and abandoned as new domes with stronger reinforcements were constructed. With the help of the outside world, a railway was constructed so Kaeres wasn’t so isolated. Crime, however, had risen, and there were barely any economic or trade policies so Kaeres could survive once it was built. The blue-collar government would not resign although they were ill-equipped to deal with these new problems. Using external help, most notably the Syed company, they were forcibly removed and Kaeres was finally able to return to its former status as an impossible city once more.
People are drawn to Kaeres like bees to pollen. Kaeres snowglobes are one of the most popular items of the frontier tourist towns that are built on the train tracks near the storm. The city’s regrowth would not have happened as quickly as it did without the revenue of tourist expenditure. Kaeres holds many prestigious universities, with architecture being one of the most popular degrees. Kaeres is dominated by concrete architecture, an abundant resource at the time of its rejuvenation, but places of nature are easily found in the form of numerous parks to small traces of ivy crawling out of cracks of skystretchers. Unfortunately there are few cultural institutions due to how new Kaeres is as a city, save for the famous Kaeres library. Kaeres is constantly worried about population growth and congestion. A limit of one car per family has been in effect for decades. New domes are slow and expensive to build, and a nightmare for company insurance when workers need to go out into the storm. Ghost stories haunt Kaeres. Sometimes people say they can see figures in the ruins of the old city, lost souls that can never enter the city for fear of drowning in air that is not of the poison storm.
